It's safe to say that as a musician I've been on hiatus for just about a decade. Sure there were shows here and there, and the actual album produced in 2004 wasn't actually released until around 2010 due to various reasons, however I haven't felt like I've been productive for a long time now.
That's changing this year. I'm back.
Throughout these past years I've faced numerous obstacles in which, at the time, I didn't realize were hindering me. I crafted stories and excuses around what was happening, fooling myself into believing that everything would eventually just get better on its own. I entered the corporate life with menial cubicle slave jobs, telling myself that this was the responsible choice and it was "easy money." The costs/consequences were downplayed because I assumed that I could handle it. I then started a family with children, got a house, and tried "being a grown up." All the while I still maintained a belief that I'd soon be back in the music scene once the circumstances allowed it.
Years later everything began falling apart. The marriage ended in divorce only weeks after my father took his own life, and then I got canned from my first corporate day job. After being unemployed for a while and depleting every penny of savings I had accumulated over 6 years, I got another slave position that brought me back to the bottom of the pay scale again. It was degrading to say the least, and it wasn't enough. I maxed out every credit card as a temporary band aid to pay all my bills, and it obviously wasn't a sustainable way of life. I had a pension, which these days are a mythical creature in itself, and sure enough raided it as yet another ditch effort to stay afloat.
Throughout this whole thing, social media became more popular than ever. While Myspace began for me as a tool to help connect to fans, I ended up getting caught up in its popularity contest aspect. When Facebook then came around it got even worse. Without realizing it, I replaced my more wholesome means of creative expression (i.e. Blog Writing, Music, Graphic Design, etc.) with short, one or two sentence status updates and unrelenting link sharing. While it did feel great to reconnect with old friends, as a whole I was finding me getting more lost than fulfilled. Social media is an absolutely stunning and amazing technology, and with it can come the dangerous side of a double-edged sword. At least for me it did.
No one ever told me, or rather I was lead to believe otherwise, that severe depression is not only real but also something that gets progressively worse if it goes untreated. Right around the time all the garbage started hitting the fan in my life, I took a chance and began seeing a therapist. At the time I just assumed that perhaps it would help somewhat to utilize a few free visits provided by my health insurance. It couldn't hurt to be a little open minded, right? It was there that I was finally able to begin seeing the walls I had constructed, and was continuing to build, throughout my adult years. I assumed that my anxiety and depression had gotten unbearable because I was "being a whiny baby," but what I learned was that the opposite was the case. Any time I questioned my own wellbeing I'd be extremely dismissive, which others in my social circle would back me up on.
"You don't even have a good REASON to be depressed, so get over it!" "You just want attention!" "This is just another excuse!"
When I opened the floodgates to my inner turmoil, I nearly drowned in it. I felt still too far away to reach for help, and even if there was some available I was too scared to ask someone else to take time out of their life to lend a hand, mostly because I loathed the idea of being a burden to others as it seemed to be extremely selfish to me. It's sad to say but I could imagine a scenario in which if I were drowning at a beach I'd probably not even call out to the lifeguards because I wouldn't have wanted to bother them. Yes, their job is to save lives and I still felt like I'd have been wasting their time saving mine.
Another thing that I wasn't told was that when you open up about this stuff and begin to actively acknowledge and work on it, the war has officially begun. Political tensions are one thing, but when the actual fighting commences is when the death toll actually rises. On most occasions I was forced to retreat and cut my losses. Bills were going unpaid and the harassment was getting worse. My day job work environment was extremely toxic. I even doubted my ability to be an adequate musician in this world.
I stopped listening to almost all music for the first time since childhood, partly because I felt so inferior, partly because of a jealousy that boiled over into a seething rage, and partly because I was craving silence. Years went by as I would drive in my car with nothing but the sound of wind blowing. This was something I never talked to anyone about because it seemed too embarrassing to convey. I was told that I'd enjoy this song or that band but I could never bring myself to listen. Streaming Video services like Netflix and Hulu were available as a great alternative to cable, which I had cancelled because of a lack of interest, only to find that I was now adding movies and shows to queues that I would never actually get to. Still haven't!
While I remember daydreaming intermittently throughout the course of my childhood and teen years, I had now found myself spending all of my free time sitting silently in empty rooms, no music, no videos, for hours on end. I really wish I was making this up as this is something I find extremely confusing, embarrassing, lazy, wasteful, and bizarre. What did this say about me as a person? I knew I was a bit strange my whole life, though at least I knew how to get along with most people if I choose to. I used to crave parties, and really I still do, and yet I was finding myself opting instead to stay home making every excuse in the book.
I told myself that perhaps I'd get going on one of my projects that I was procrastinating on, only to become immediately distracted. Facebook had been a great source for reaching out and connecting to others, but it had become a vice for me. In itself it's a great technology that can be used for so much good, which is what I told myself that I was using it for, yet instead I was just going for cheap thrills. They were the quick, unrelenting stimuli with a growing, unsatisfied craving for more and more. My blogging/journal writing would only be visited once every few months as opposed to daily, if not at least weekly, in which I just wrote off as being an antiquated practice, whereas short status messages and witty Twitter musings were my new bread and butter. I didn't have time, I told myself, to write long entries, nor did it seem necessary for my means of expression as no one seemed to even want to read blogs anymore. (Or at least I stopped reading them and projected this on to others.)
Throughout this time I technically kept myself busy by writing, producing, and publishing slightly experimental instrumental albums. I recreated Test Subject as an authentic retro video game chip tune album that ended up selling about ten times more than the original album that took over a year to self-produce. With that I decided to publish a second chip tune album, this time with all original songs and also received notable praise. It wasn't exactly the sort of thing that I felt deep down expressed what I'd really wanted to put out, though it was at least a start. In 2014 I took it upon myself then to produce an album consisting of 50 songs, all under a minute in length, all done exclusively in one application on my iPhone during breaks and lunches at my day job. It was an experiment in the concept of writing in general as well as an action in a step towards getting back to my serious electro-rock band writing. At this point the band was lucky if we performed two shows a year, so this was like a small, lit candle in a very large and dark room.
It was in 2014 while producing the Micro Song Collection that I finally began to change in the right direction and was climbing out of this hole I was in. For years I hadn't realized how much more reactive I had become rather than proactive. I acted as if I needed permission from others to be who I am and do what I do. This wasn't always the case as my first album was pretty much a "fuck you" to everyone who said that my desire to make art was a worthless hobby, a bad obsession. Test Subject was a pun in itself in that it was meant to be an experiment to demonstrate that I am a capable, independent artist. Sure it was rough as hell; I had almost no experience or technical knowledge. While I connected socially with a few musicians, I pretty much figured everything out on my own through trial and error, and it was my drive to wave that flag of independence that got it produced and published. Not one day goes by that I don't see each and every flaw in its production; though over time I let it define me negatively instead of positively. It is now that I can fully recognize it for what it is and allow it to simply be, and to not let its flaws define me as a capable musician.
It may seem petty or silly, though it was in 2014 that I began to stand my ground with my points of view during controversy. I was berated and yelled at; though this time I allowed the truth to motivate me. I argued with others on social media and posted very specific stances on issues that I'm passionate about, knowing very well that there are those that disagree with me. I told myself to actively do this in order to prove to myself that my opinions matter and to stop compromising on who I am, with the caveat that if I learn that I'm wrong about something that I'd have to agree to change my ways and to not take it personally. I feel as if over the years I subconsciously took the easy path of not making waves in order to avoid conflict because the stress in my life was way more than I could handle. Now I know better. If someone wants to gloat about being right about something I was wrong about, then that's their business, I really don't care anymore. In fact, the fear of being wrong is one of the big factors in which contributed to my insecurities because I just couldn't take the poor sportsmanship of others, who'd relentlessly be triumphant in their righteous indignations.
"See, I was right!"
"So what? You're a fuck face and that negates the good you do for being correct!"
So this is where I restart the engine. I'm writing again and have big plans. Big plans that I'm acting on, that is. I'm greatly reducing my use of social media and instead focusing my efforts on my art and performances. I'm done being just useful for others to use. I'm excited. I'm a bit scared. I'm more focused. I'm determined.
I'm back.
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