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I have chosen to go all in

 Ah the glorious in-between.

I’m waiting for a video file to upload so that I can proceed with my new edit. And I find myself in the in-between. I instinctively went to my browser and loaded Facebook, and then Instagram. My compulsive urge to return to these sites has become a lot worse recently, ever since I decided to share myself and my work again, in February. I guess I’ll write about that.


I take us back to 2018, the year I dub ‘the most epic fail year of my life’, and it absolutely was. I was so naive back then, and I adamantly refused to get a job because I thought I could ‘make it’ as a musician. In my efforts, I ended up on the welfare benefit, scrounging for my next dollar and picking up the pieces of a shattered life purpose. My hopes and dreams seemed to obtainable, so possible to achieve, but how foolish was I, thinking that Life was so QUICK. It’s not. I was beginning to explore themes such as Life Purpose and Mastery, and I had even called my Memoir and life-long writing project 'The Heroes Journey', based upon the archetypal hero leaving home in search of a higher thing, finding purpose, finding spirituality.. But Life Purpose, Mastery, The Heroes Journey and Spirituality are subjects of a lifetime. They take decades to cultivate and nurture. And for good reason. They strike at the core of the life journey, as I see it, and they give context and meaning to our lives. Of course they take time to cultivate and nurture. If anybody could just take a ‘Mastery’ capsule and one day become the world’s best Jazz Saxophonist, their music would have no meaning, because there was no journey. Maybe one day somebody will invent a Mastery Capsule. The future is catching up to us. Who knows what people are going to invent? If there was a Mastery Capsule, would you take it? Or would you opt for the Lifetime-of-practice approach? 


It is an interesting thing to think about.




I needed that year, to knock some sense into me. That was 4 years ago, and I still haven’t technically ‘made it’ as a musician. That is to say, it takes a long time. Anyway, I wanted to write about my use of social media. Throughout the epic fail year, I was on instagram all the time. It was an addiction, a third eye watching my life and projecting it to the world. I would film everything and put it on my story. One day I looked at something I had posted, and I just thought ‘who is this idiot?’ I was putting on a character - it wasn’t me. It was some fool who thought he was funny. Maybe he was funny. But most likely he was just making people cringe away from their phones. After that realisation, I stopped using instagram, and I would only post on there when I had made a new video for my Youtube channel. But then one day, I stopped sharing my videos too. Eventually, I became so self-conscious about the character I was playing in all of these games that I stopped sharing myself and my work entirely. 


That completely changed in February this year. I came to this realisation that humans judge humans - it’s just what we do. Even if I didn’t share myself and my work, and posted the odd picture about this or that, people would still judge me and my post. So why not just put myself out there, share myself absolutely, share my work absolutely, and damn the thoughts of the other? Why should I give those thoughts bearing over my life anyway? I don’t anymore. I’m engaging in my crafts with a roaring commitment this year, and sharing myself and my work with reckless abandon. I have to. I have no choice but to share myself and my work, because it’s like oxygen to me now. I’ve always had an intense desire to share my work, ever since I was a kid. I guess it’s natural. 


Sometimes I get self-conscious about how people are perceiving me online, but then I remember that I have no control over the thoughts of others. I can only control how I live my life. So I should hope to live it well, continue making art, continue sharing that art in a hope that it will move someone in some way, perhaps inspire them to create their own art, or engage in some creative project, or perhaps start exploring their own Life Purpose, or Mastery, or whatever. I don’t know. I can’t control the influence of my work either. I can only control how much of myself I put into my work. 


And I have chosen to go all in. 


Anyway, my file just finished uploading (finally… 4K Files, I’ll tell you what…) It’s time to work on this new video. Have a great day, and thanks for reading. 


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