Songwriting as a lifestyle and career

If you are an independent artist and you know how exhausting it can be to do all of your music marketing on your own. Spending countless hours staring at a computer screen working on marketing strategies and material that may not even work. I started playing guitar and writing music when I was 16 years old. Thirty-eight years later at the age of 54, I am still writing music and I have not waivered in my drive. Despite the ongoing negativity, snide remarks, and plain and simple judgment by others regarding my career choices, I carry on with what I love to do with my time. People will tell you to “follow your dreams” but many times they mean as long as your dreams line up with what they want or expect. If I had listened to the hundreds of negative comments over the years I would have given up long ago. I never considered “giving up”, there’s nothing to give up on because I live it with so much feeling and meaning that it fulfills everything within me. I see so many people searching for something to fulfill them and have yet to find it. I see people bouncing from whim to whim, fad to fad in search of meaning and satisfaction and many end up only with more material things and wasted time. It is mind-boggling when someone judges my actions while they flounder and search for meaning. It is comical to me when I find myself being judged for my choices and “failures” by someone that has not made any attempt at anything other than going to work each day at a job they don’t even like and then watching tv the rest of the evening while nodding off in their recliner while mindlessly staring at a phone screen. Although I do find it comical in an “I don’t understand human nature” kind of way, I also have empathy for these individuals because the insults they hurl at me are projections of what they lack in their existence. It seems to subconsciously bother some individuals when they see how much fun I am having in my music adventures and they often deal with this by attempting to cut me down. To be continued…