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Success is Bullshit
That’s right, I said it. Success, as most of us define it, is total BS. Think about it: it’s a completely relative, absolutely arbitrary measure we create in our own minds to judge ourselves against. And when you set that bar high, you end up spending a good part of your life, or even your entire life, knocking your self-worth down a peg when you’re not reaching your own subjective and lofty standards. It actually doesn’t make any sense and is directly related to the innate problems of perfectionism that seem productive but are actually self-destructive. And that’s why it’s bullshit.
Making Art for Art's Sake or: How I Learned to Give Up the Agenda
When my band broke up last year, I found myself in an uncomfortable but interesting place. I’d been in bands for almost my entire life starting shortly after I first picked up the guitar (six months after, to be exact). From that time in 1996 through 2011, the longest stretch of time when I wasn’t in at least one band was no longer than a few months. It’s always been something that felt right to me, that feeling of being an important part of a small, tight-knit group of like-minded musicians creating new and exciting things. But here I was after a six and a half year run with Shaimus: bandless, lost and exhausted.
Seeing Through the Eyes of a Photographer
I have always been an admirer of great photographs. Photography is one of those things that you don’t really think about until you try it and notice your shots aren’t nearly as interesting as the ones you see in magazines. For most of my life, I wasn’t particularly good at photography. To me, a great picture was a mystery, something with an intangible element that couldn’t be learned. One of the reasons I believed that was because I knew a few people who seemed like effortlessly great photographers. I could take a picture of the exact same subject matter, yet somehow their photo was vibrant and captivating while mine seemed flat and lifeless.
The Intangible Talent
There is some truth to the mystery, I think. Like any artist, some people do have an innate talent that seems to make them naturally fluent in their medium. But I was wrong to think they were “good” and I was “bad.” I simply never bothered to try learning some of the basic techniques that can make an average picture significantly better. Pretty much all of the arts have two fundamental levels: the first is learning the general skills and tips that anyone can memorize and practice. In photography it would be things like how to frame shots effectively, learning about aperture and shutter speed, etc. In music it would be basic theory on chords, scales, intervals, etc. And then there’s the second level, which is where the intangibles kick in: taking competency to artistry, transcending the rules by discovering your own.
Comfort in the Skies
For many years now, I have had a minor obsession with all things outer space: astrophysics, the night sky, stars, planets, nebulas, constellations, solar systems, galaxies, you name it. I am captivated by the science of astronomy and pictures of celestial bodies. They are, without a doubt, the most epic images ever captured by man. But while many of my friends probably already know of my extraterrestrial interests, they might not know exactly why I am so drawn to it… Why I savor every chance to gaze upon its grandeur and find no term too dramatic to describe it.
Well, here is why: besides being strikingly beautiful, it gives me comfort by reminding me that we are but an insignificant speck in a vast, unfathomable universe. To say that feeling inconsequential is comforting might seem a bit counterintuitive, but that sort of contradiction is exactly how life feels to me.
The Importance of Reminders
Some days I wish I were a wise old sage, able to conjure the profoundest of philosophies to complement any moment or opportunity that might present itself. Or I wish I were like Wilson from Home Improvement, a human library filled with quotes that spanned centuries of the greatest thinkers throughout history. I see websites devoted to reflective quotes and their everyday application to our lives, I read stories of people who were seemingly inspired to do their life’s work by a brief passage in a book.
On Perfection
Perfection is what you get when you stop expecting it of yourself. I didn’t always think this, though. Until recently, I spent most of my life fancying myself a perfectionist. I took pride in my opinion that over the course of one short life, the only way to truly reach your full potential was to strive for nothing less than perfection in everything you can possibly control. There was just no point in living any other way.
The Self-Help Delusion
I think it’s time to get over this whole “self help” thing. There is an entire industry based around telling us that they have the elusive secret to happiness, that if you just read this book, watch that video or do these exercises you can become a better, fuller person. I’ve read a lot of stuff like this, and even though I appreciate good advice, I’ve come to almost resent the whole idea of “self improvement.” I resent it because it tricked me into putting my energy towards trying to find something that I had all along.
Cynicism In Action
I’ve been called cynical a good number of times in my life. Most of these times were when I was a little younger, particularly in my teenage years when I wore the label as something of a badge of honor. I believed that cynical people weren’t deserving of criticism because they simply saw things for what they really are, which just happened to be a harsher view than the average person. I felt as though being called cynical was really just a way of saying that I thought differently and saw clearly. I was proud of that.
Committing to a Mistake
Lessons I Learned From Being Poor
I was very fortunate to have grown up in relative comfort as a kid. While my family wasn’t exactly wealthy, there was never a question of whether there would be food on the table or bills would be paid. I was encouraged not to live wastefully and to be smart with my money, but it was never a situation where we were conserving energy for fear that we wouldn’t be able to cover the electric bill.
Then I went to college.
Now Is All That Matters
I was staring irrelevance straight in the face, and I didn’t like it. The conversation began innocently enough: We’re in an interesting time musically, I was explaining to a friend, because popular music as we know it was created at a time that has allowed us to see an amazing amount of creative innovation, but recently enough that we don’t have to be completely overwhelmed with the amount of music we could potentially explore as listeners and performers. (Though sometimes I still do feel overwhelmed when trying to cover enough musical ground to feel as though my grasp of music history is reasonably comprehensive.)
The Making of Meaning
For millennia, man has wondered the same thing, over and over: do our lives have meaning? Is there some larger purpose that transcends the biological, evolutionary machines that are our physical bodies, something more important than basic survival and reproduction?
Above the Clouds
One morning in high school, I woke up and looked out my window. It was gloomy; a thick, charcoal cloud blanketed the entire sky and light rain dive-bombed from above. On this particular day, I would be flying west to Colorado to go camping with my sister and her family. I was never a big fan of flying on days like this, but there was no use complaining about the inevitable. I groggily packed my things and shuffled out the door.
I sat in my airplane seat as it taxied to the runway and felt ambivalent. I was excited to go on a trip, but less than enthused about the flight that would precede it. It’s not that I was a nervous flyer… I just didn’t feel like sitting in a cramped seat for five hours and breathe recycled air while snacking on stale pretzels. Waking up to dreariness had affected my demeanor accordingly.
Is Art For the Artist or the Consumer?
During a recent recording session, I had a conversation about creating music and art for yourself vs. creating it for others. In some ways you create art for yourself, because it is a fulfilling thing that expresses a part of you. In other ways, the moment you have created something, it is no longer yours and suddenly becomes the emotional property of someone else.
So which is it? How can art be both for ourselves and for others’ enjoyment?
Persistence and Rejection
So much of how successful we are is determined by our ratio of persistence to rejection. Everything worth doing requires persistence, and everything done well requires the ability to handle rejection. The key to being successful (among other important things such as talent and intuition) is making sure your persistence outweighs your tolerance for rejection.
Every person who is successful, whether in a professional or personal capacity, has failed far more times than not. But I think most of us know that already. If you couldn’t take failure, you probably wouldn’t be at the point in your life where reading a blog post like this would even interest you. You’d already have resigned yourself to another life pursuit. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing in and of itself, I might add.
I Don't Need to Be Brilliant
I put a lot of pressure on myself. I am my own worst critic. I cut myself less slack than anyone else possibly could. If I don’t, I might create something that sucks. I might make myself vulnerable to legitimate criticism. I could cut off the bad stuff at the source and let only the most brilliant, genius, groundbreaking material get out into the public. That would be such a relief. Then I’d know everything I create will be wonderful, because I’ve already given myself so much shit and demanded I be great from the start.
If only it worked that way.
Do What You Hate
In my last post, I talked about doing what you love no matter how good you are at it. But it’s also important to do what you hate—as long as you know when to stop.
That might sound counterintuitive, but the fact is, using life to figure out what you don’t want is far easier than just picking the things you think you will want. By process of elimination, it’s the best path to finding what you should do with your life.
Don't Stick to What You're Good At
I was listening to an album of solo acoustic guitar music played by a virtuoso of the instrument, when suddenly it came to a track where he started singing. My first gut reaction to his less-than-stellar vocal ability was to say, “Whoa dude, stop. Stick to what you’re good at.”
But then I realized that’s complete bullshit.