One of my journal entries from this week begins as follows:
It would be nice if i was not perpetually annoyed by anything and everything around me.
If you knew me in real life, you would probably not describe me as such a miserable person, but the beauty of having a private journal system is you can actually be a human being.
Therefore it’s safe to say that all my pleasantries and appearance of having one or two things figured out in my life are complete bullshit. Every day I wake up screaming and scrambling like a baby that just shot out of an abdomen in a hospital.
Sometimes I wake up earlier than I’m supposed to and start worrying about anything and everything under the sun. But having my fruity drip coffee and writing in my journal helps put everything back together for me.
I hope that if you’re currently in a state of worry, that hearing from someone else who can admit that life is stressful might be that cup of coffee and a journal for you.
How to Get Something Done
Most of my stress in life comes from not producing enough artifacts, also known as cosmic farts, to provide a sense of meaning after I turn into fairy dust.
This is not a healthy way to live but I do believe that this focus on making music and writing newsletters is a fairly good cause overall even though I am not able to help with climate change or world peace.
An hour before writing this letter, it dawned on me that the point of my newsletter is not to communicate anything to you, but to train myself to hit send every Sunday morning.
So then I realized that the answer to my eternal stress about not doing enough is really simple - put yourself on a release schedule. It’s like putting yourself on a diet, except for making things.
The commitment to make something every week, month, quarter or year is not going to be enough though. You have to do it in public. It has to get shared with other people in order for the work to exist.
You can noodle about all you want, and by no means do you have to share everything that you work on, but for the release schedule, you share the item that you are most proud of or that you think has to get released.
For people who play sports, the release schedule is often built into the activity - every week or so you are in a match. But in the creative world it’s not the same. You have to get on stage to do standup, you have to get your art into a show and for me I love to put my music on Spotify even if it won’t get listened to that many times, it’s still fun to toot new music out.
I don’t love social media. Most people agree, it’s fairly boring and cringey. However you can use it for your own purposes of bettering yourself by sharing what you’re working on, on an app like Instagram or YouTube. If you prefer writing, then go with Substack.
Engineering Good Spirits for Others
This week I saw an ad on the subway that said something like, “Engineer success for others”. They were looking for engineers to work for the transit corporation.
I realized that musicians and artists are in the business of engineering good spirits for others. I originally wrote this down as engineering good moods for others, but I don’t think the purpose of art is to necessarily put someone else in a good mood. But experiencing a good work of art definitely connects you to the spirit.
This is why people enjoy going to concerts, the theatre or the cinema. For those 2-3 hours they will be teleported to a new place, and in the process, their spirits will be lifted.
Going to Shows: It’s All About Intention
This week I saw the Korean movie Broker in the theatre. A few weeks before that I saw Avatar. In any movie, I love hearing the soundtrack music kick in. Soundtracks don’t even have to be that great, but just the effect of being in a dark room watching the big screen, you almost always get a bit of goosebumps when you hear a good piano or drone.
However, we don’t get as many goosebumps scrolling through random videos on a dirty screen that’s been in your pocket all day.
Going to a show is all about the intention: “I am here to watch this film or see this musician tonight at 7pm”.
If there is any takeaway from this, I would say we can all stand to be a bit more intentional when we pick up our phones. Are we on there to kill a bit of time? That’s fine, but don’t complain that you have no time when you have logged an hour scrolling.
Even though I am not in the position to be the moral police, another example would be how people tend to postpone watching higher-quality films on streaming services.
I once read that engineers at Netflix knew that users were saving movies like Schindler’s List to their watchlist, but not getting around to watching them in favour of easier-to-digest titles (sorry I can’t find a link to this story to footnote).
I would say the best workaround for this is to do a very boring thing: schedule high quality media into your calendar. This can include the intention to listen to an album from start to finish rather than just put on playlists while you do other activities.
Free Workshop with Elliott
On the topic of spending your time, a while back I had the idea to start the Office Hours project to help people get their projects going. I am hosting my first session on Tuesday, January 31st.
The focus of it will be on starting your own blog or newsletter with Substack. You can sign up for the free session here.
Ok I hope you have a great rest of your weekend.
See you next week,
Elliott