I feel that I have finally honed in on the essence of what I love to do as a musician.  But being both a goal-oriented (or I should say deadline-oriented, as I never get anything done without those) and See-the-Need-Meet-the-Need person, I am feeling the need to frame my artistic pursuit as a set of specific goals, complete with deadlines and priorities assigned.  Maybe I am treading back to the familiar terrain where I got stuck, but really — I just can’t seem to spend any time doing anything unless it is meeting a specific need (of someone else’s) or making some kind of deadline.

But what should my goal be?  What I need to do is to make music.  I can further define that as writing, recording and releasing music.

So — my goals should be set so that I do those things, right?  It sounds simple enough.  To release music, I need to have a finished recording.  To have a finished recording, I need to record, mix and master a recording.  To start recording a song, the songwriting should be finished.  No problem — I have a whole bucket full of unreleased songs.

But my mind quickly wonders into areas outside of that.  Like how I want an audience for my songs.  Like how I want a nice-looking web site as a platform for my songs.  How I’d love to test new mics or mic preamps to record my songs.  Are any of these things necessary for me to write, record and release songs?  NO.

My time is extremely limited.  If I clatter it up with unnecessary things, the precious little I have will be gone — forever.  So I feel that I have to be disciplined about this.

It’s funny to say that I have to be disciplined about spending time doing what it is that I love the most, but I think that’s true for many of us.  We just don’t allow ourselves to do the thing that feeds us the most, because we get used to starving ourselves.

So, I’m going to try and set the right goals this time.  To actually do what I love to do.  This is not about business or promotion or proving anything to anybody.  I need to make myself do what I love.