You spent the first five years trying to get with the plan
And the next five years trying to be with your friends again
First of all — we’re bringing back using lyrics as status messages, cryptic posts, etc. We’ve cowered under the pressure of "what if it’s cringe" for many years, and now it seems like emo is back and so are cryptic lyric posts!
Second of all — I spent the past 10 years focused on my career. Well, it wasn’t so much "focus" as "holding on for dear life, terrified of what would happen if I relaxed for even a split second and let it all slip."
Many things have come from this; good things and bad things.
Good things:
- Financial stability (insofar as financial stability is possible within the context of ✨everything✨)
- Skills in copywriting, marketing, paying taxes, good and clear communication, etc.
Bad things:
- I completely lost my "tone of voice" with my writing and speaking (!!!)
- I have corpo-brain
Like, I’ll find these little artifacts of "office culture" in my everyday life (despite not being in an office environment for the past 3 years!) and it’ll feel so weird.
And the worst of it is that I can’t get rid of the "productivity mindset"! It’s really dulling the vibe here in toni’s house.
Like, I’ll spend… IDK… 30-40 minutes working on a song, and I’ll be having fun, and the song will turn out to be pretty okay
and then I’ll look at the time and realized that it took me, like, nearly an hour to make a draft of a two-minute tune.
And immediatelly it’s like the fucking UK House of Commons in my head with two opposing parties yelling at each other about:
- You gotta use time more effectively! You gotta be faster, better, stronger!
and - You have to enjoy the process and give yourself the time and space to experiment a little!
And then there’s the terrified version of me that’s supposed to consolidate these two opposing opinions, yelling, "Order! Order!" like it’s gonna have anny effect on the thought spiral that’s gained enough momentum to ruin the rest of my day.
Anyway, all of this is to say that I’m learning to spend time every day working on songs and learning (really learning) how to use my DAW of choice and learning how to EQ and turn messy, windy, field recordings into surprisingly clear and nice soundbeds for the chords and melodies.
And in the meantime my corpo-brain yells at me for not looking for new gigs on UpWork and doing something that’s going to have a better ROI than making fucking ambient music.
thanks for tuning in! luv u.
p.s. I’ll definitely be exploring the "corpo-brain" concept a bit more later, so I made a tag for it.