An Indie Musician's Diary Volume 4: Album two in the making

Jan 11th, 2022: Stats (2021); Self Help Inventory & Music Goals for 2022

Psst: if you go to the bottom of this post there are great tips to help you have a great 2022!*

The first thing I did after the holidays was to sleep. I slept a lot! I was so pooped out and slept so many hours it amazed me. I guess that I was close to being burned out.

After resting,  I took a day, today, as I usually do in January, to analyse my music stats from the previous year (as all musicians should), in order to make some decisions for how I might do better this year. 

I'm going to be brutally honest with you in this chapter - I don't like the conclusions that I came to but it may lead both you and I to a great 2022. I hope this chapter challenges you to be good to yourself this year and every year. Here we go!

My annual day of reckoning is always a tough one but it is a necessary one. It's like taking a general health exam and finding that you need to eat less sugar and exercise more to get back the body you want and get your blood pressure down. You sort of knew it all the time, (subconsciously), but now you have the glaring data blinking like a neon sign in front of your face and, because you want to live a long and good life, you make a New Years decision/resolution to get back to the gym regularly.

What I saw, when I collected and analysed all the data, was that

- I had lost followers and the engagement was down on most (but not all) my social media/music accounts compared to 2020. Of course, in 2020 I released a whole album and that took 5 years. So who am I to expect myself to get an equal reaction to a few singles and a handful of music videos- what I had produced last year.

O.k. "I need to release music more often in order to grow followers", I said to myself.

Could it be that I didn't post enough or good enough social media posts often enough?  "Yeah, I guess so", I mumbled to myself. People have a very short attention span. I guess they would love to see a new colourful and engaging post every day but I can't imagine  being able to create posts that often and get enough time to  music every day.

No matter how I thought about my life and my work I just ket coming back to the fact that:

"I can't do everything an indie musician can do when I am forced to do it by myself."

I have to learn to pace myself and prioritise.

At the end of 2021 my desire to keep going on with music was running dry. All this work the last six and a half years and so little response. Either I suck, the music sucks or I am an idiot.....

No I am not an idiot but the music industry sucks. The time we are living in.....it's complicated!

I had to face it I needed to accept that I need to take care of myself and stop chasing stats. Let them fall. Stop posting just to try to stay relevant and get the music that is on my heart out no matter whether or not the masses hear it at all.

i need to release music for me. Period. Not so my husband is happy and proud of me. Not so I get invited to tv/zoom programs. Not so that my stats look good. For me! Because I want to. But do I want to? Yes and no.

I found myself on the edge of giving up completely at the end of 2021. No band. No support from the musicians around me. No energy. Almost no response or growth. Something was wrong. Allow me to rant about it.

Background:

Last year proved to me that I am not feeling well emotionally after being alone at home. creating music for others, with very little response and much investment, for over the past six plus years. It finally flattened my soul's tire, so to speak, and I'm not sure that I can fix it. I wish I had a can of spray that I could stick in my mouth and pssst everything would be alright. (My though go to spray whipped cream! believe me it only works for about a minute or two! Lol)