Some tell me, “You have to not care and just have a good time.”
Others tell me, “You have to work hard, get yourself out there. Constantly promoting, constantly marketing. Never stop. You won’t get anywhere by sitting on your ass.”
Is it just me, or do these two recommendations sound contradictory?
On one hand, I need to not care… on the other hand, I need to care a lot. This paradox drives me crazy. When I’ve tried not caring about my music, I didn’t work very hard or do any sort of promotion. I essentially sat around in my boxers all day, playing guitar. But when I’ve tried working hard on my music career, I found myself worrying a lot about success. I became self conscious and fearful of not selling enough CDs, or making enough new fans, or getting enough new opportunities. I need to care, but not care… nonsense!
I wonder if this is a semantics thing (or perhaps it’s a problem with the way I think and the way I understand these recommendations of caring, but not caring). Maybe I shouldn’t use the word “care” for either situation… I think it might be too vague.
Maybe a good way of rephrasing these ideas would be that I need to put effort into my music career, but I need to not worry about how much success I have. In other words, I need to enjoy all aspects of what it is to be a singer-songwriter. If I don’t want to play shows, or record, or promote my music, or talk to fans, I shouldn’t be a singer-songwriter.
But what I’m coming to realize is that I really do enjoy being a part of the music industry. In a fairly small way, I’m already living the dream that I’ve had since I was twelve years old - being a musician. But I need to avoid getting bogged down by the slow speed of success (I can’t even say I’ve had many failures yet… it’s just taking a while to get my music out to the public, which is to be expected). I love working on my music career. It is, however, difficult to live in the tension of caring, but not caring. All I can do is keep at it, and learn to become more comfortable in the tension.
Tags: care, contradiction, effort, Jeff Hawker, music career, music industry, paradox, tension, worry
I think the things worth doing require us to go through our fears- go through the muck of doubts, pride, anxiety… ” Life is either a daring adventure..or nothing” Especially with the arts: such a neccessary part of life and you, most likey. Keep with it.
For sure, being content is really important as musician. It does mean living in the tension of being intentionally inefficient (so you can grow in your ability as an artist and reflect on your work) and intentionally doing something (writing, recording, touring, building a fan base).
you have your whole life to fail.
Ghandi said it
Hi Jeff, I was reading recently about the struggle of making art (music) when your “self” gets in the way. Creativity comes when “self” is not in the way, when you are not self-conscience or self-aware, but as soon as “self” introduces itself again, you get the worry of success, the “what if I’m not good enough?” When you are creating, it only works if you don’t let yourself worry if YOU are good enough, you just do it! I thought it made sense to me, but I may not have explained it well enough.