Hello my lovelies.
Ahh, 2021. A new year. It seems we are all reflecting on the past year a lot more than usual. I’ve been enjoying reading everybody’s re-cap 0f 2020 posts on Facebook. Thought I might do a bit of the same.
Do you know that I’m a professional writer? It’s actually what I do for work when I’m not musicing and it was a massive part of 2020 for me. In March I decided to leave my job as a music teacher and work for myself full time from home. It was an idea I'd been toying with for a few years, freelance writing on the side, but never ready to take the plunge into it full time.
My reasons? I wanted more time with my kids, and private music lessons are from 2:30pm-9pm weekdays. Throw gigs into the mix and that's basically me not existing in my kids lives. I also wanted to build something of my own that I could make a decent income from.
Freelance writing is about as difficult to break into as the music industry. It takes a lot of time, energy and persistence. You have to have extremely thick skin and learn how to run a serious business. It's just so typical of me to go the hard rout, but I needed a way I could work from home, and I wanted to make livable-off money doing it.
I think it's typical and kind of funny that while everybody was being forced to work from home, I was doing it voluntarily and striving to make it sustainable.
So my writing business was basically my sole focus all year after I got the news that we couldn't do any gigs.
And you know, I know all about professional blogging and getting to the first page of Google and blahdi blaah. It’s fun, I do love it, but I find that when I land here, on my own little music blog, I just want to write from the good old heart.
There’s just so much to share. The life of a musician, businesswomen, mum, human, creative person, is just...a lot! And I feel like we need to share, especially during COVID lameness.
Also, I just get a bit exhausted from the online marketing world. We’re all constantly confronted with everybody else’s success, there’s so much pressure to do what everybody else is doing. After a while, I start to feel like I’m going crazy. But I guess work is sometimes just work and it can’t always be exciting.
Anyway.
2020 wasn’t really a difficult year for me personally. It kind of forced me to think more about the direction I was heading in and what I actually want in life. I think I needed everything to stop and I think I’m in a better place now than I would have been.
Yes, we had to cancel our tours. Yes, I got asked to go to Brazil which was a bit crazy until it got canned. Yes, we’ve done 1 gig since March, and I’m not booking anything until there's a light at the end of the COVID tunnel.
But funnily enough, out of the blue came the inspiration and energy to record my next album, our first band album. I really didn’t think I’d have the energy, but I do.
And I also realised that I want this year to be the year where I finish the things I’ve started and build on them.
Part of that is getting my email community happening again. If you’d like to join, please do! One of my big focuses this year is going to be staying in touch with the people who want to connect and share art and journeys. Now that gigging is kind of off the table, I’m looking for other ways and emails will be one of them.
And I am currently tired. Inspired but tired. Focusing more on my kids and writing and making this album. I’m happy. Life is very good and I’m very blessed. If you’d like to keep up to date with the new album, pre-purchasing it, articles, gigs, and just stuff in general sign up to my email list!
Happy New Year lovelies X