{"id":44413,"date":"2025-01-24T05:30:23","date_gmt":"2025-01-24T05:30:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/peraltafinancing.com\/adventure\/dont-quit-playing-your-music\/"},"modified":"2025-01-24T05:30:23","modified_gmt":"2025-01-24T05:30:23","slug":"dont-quit-playing-your-music","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=44413","title":{"rendered":"Don’t Quit Playing Your Music"},"content":{"rendered":"


\n<\/p>\n

\n

A few weeks ago, Jesse, the band director at one of our local high schools,<\/strong> asked if I might like to come in and speak to his class about creativity and persistence. I dug up my old junior high marching band photo, drew a bunch of charts, trying to get at something that would be relevant to their lives even if they quit band (like I did, at the end of eighth grade\u2014see below).\u00a0<\/span>This is a slightly more detailed version of the talk I gave to the class:<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

I\u2019m a full-time creative, which means \u2026 well, it\u2019s kind of different every year.<\/strong> My job has been 100 percent freelance since 2012, which essentially means I have a bunch of different part-time jobs, or \u201cside gigs.\u201d One of which is public speaking, but not really TED Talk-style speeches. I like to create slide shows with lots of illustrations, and then talk about those. Here\u2019s a pie chart of some of the things I\u2019ve done for money since I became a full-time freelancer\/independent creative in 2012:<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Sometimes that looks like some of the photos here, where I\u2019m out in nature somewhere, far from an internet connection:<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

But honestly, 99.5 percent of the time, I\u2019m sitting at a desk or a table trying to create something from one of the experiences I\u2019ve had out there, or some idea that came to me when I was outside. I\u2019ve been doing this a while, but before I got to do it full-time, I had many years of working other jobs, starting with my first real W-2 part-time job as a dishwasher and busser at a restaurant when I was 15, in the Pinicon Restaurant in my hometown, New Hampton, Iowa. We clocked in at 4:00 or 5:00 p.m. and washed dishes until bus tubs of dishes stopped appearing on the wire rack next to the dish pit, which sometimes took until 12:30 p.m. if there was a wedding reception in the dining room.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

After high school, I became a bartender and server at an Applebee\u2019s restaurant, and then a sports bar and grill after that. I loved waiting tables and bartending because it gave me a rotating audience to talk to every night. Some of my managers might say I should have spent more time trying to upsell appetizers and drinks instead of trying to make people laugh, but I thought I was a pretty good waiter.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

After college, I worked for about three years at a couple of very small newspapers that no one read. I didn\u2019t love it, but I also assumed no one landed their dream job right out of college. Plus, I had plans to become a successful adventure writer, so after work, I pitched articles ideas to climbing and adventure magazines. My first year of freelance writing, I made $40. The next year, I made $150, and the year after that, I made $1,800, so it was a good thing I had a \u201creal job\u201d besides freelance adventure writing.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

I quit my last newspaper job in 2008, choosing to take a pay cut (!) and work a nonprofit job I was probably overqualified for. But at least I could talk to my co-workers about rock climbing, and even go climbing and skiing with them after work. And I kept pitching my adventure stories to magazines, and I started to get more bites, and more income.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

I quit my nonprofit job for a sweet remote copywriting gig my friend hooked me up with, and then I could work remotely, writing marketing copy about software products, and then in my spare time growing my freelance writing. Around this time I started my own website, Semi-Rad.com, where I decided to publish one piece of writing per week. Those blogs were mostly ideas I thought were too ridiculous or unserious for \u201creal\u201d outdoor publications, which was probably why people liked them. I mean, some people did. I started to get some traction pretty quickly and slowly grew an audience and found more opportunities coming my way.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

By mid-2012, I finally had enough freelance work to make a go of it full-time. I was completely terrified, but put in my two weeks\u2019 notice at my copywriting job, shipped my work computer back to the company. I walked out of the pack and ship place anxiously hoping I could make enough money to keep things going for the next few months, and find more ways to make money so I could continue being a \u201cfull-time freelancer.\u201d<\/p>\n

I did OK that first six months, but it\u2019s worth noting that I was living in 2005 Chevy Astrovan at the time, sleeping on friends\u2019 couches a lot, and had a $100\/month health insurance policy that would probably have covered almost nothing if I had needed medical attention for anything.<\/p>\n

Still, I was making a living. It didn\u2019t feel solid, and in our weekly phone calls, my dad would always ask if I had enough work coming in. He would do this for the next five years, when I think he felt like I was doing OK (I was).<\/p>\n

But every year, my pie chart of income sources changes, and so does another pie chart I think about a lot: Imagine with me, if you will, that you get to decide how to spend your 40ish-hour work week, and you classify the things you do as serving either \u201cCapitalism\u201d or \u201cCreativity.\u201d Capitalism, in this case, just being a word that means \u201cmaking money,\u201d which used to just mean \u201cmaking money so I can afford to eat,\u201d but nowadays means \u201cmaking money so I can afford to eat, and also afford to have a place to live with my wife and toddler, and also afford to pay for medical expenses, and other stuff.\u201d In theory, you have a blank pie chart, which you can fill in:<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re a creative person, of course you\u2019d love to spend all your time concentrating on your art, whatever that is\u2014playing the trumpet, writing fan fiction, painting landscapes, photographing architecture. That would look like this:<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, that\u2019s not a reality for most of us, and by \u201cmost of us,\u201d I mean people who are not independently wealthy or who might have a very understanding spouse\/partner who has promised to pay for everything so their partner can spend their time on art.<\/p>\n

Most of us have to work in some capacity, which of course is a huge bummer but necessary if we also want to do things like eating sandwiches, which cost money, even if you make them at home. But you are\/were creative, so you don\u2019t want to spend all your time on \u201cwork,\u201d which would look like this:<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Of course I\u2019d love my \u201cjob\u201d to provide total creative freedom, but as previously discussed, everybody* has to pay bills, so even the most free creative situation might look like this, a 75\/25 split:<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

But honestly, that\u2019s not how it looks for most of us. People have full-time jobs in which they use their creativity, or like me, are, \u201cindependent,\u201d which just means you\u2019re constantly trying to find ways to get paid for creative work. Either way, you spend a lot of time doing things that aren\u2019t purely \u201ccreating,\u201d like meetings, emails, charging batteries, cleaning paintbrushes, and messaging the accounting department to find out why you haven\u2019t been paid yet. In my case, some weeks it feels like I work a lot more on the non-creative stuff, as I imagine most people in creative careers feel. In any case, I consider myself lucky that I get to spend even 25 percent of my time being creative, so my pie chart looks like this, and I\u2019m totally fine with it:<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s a picture of me in eighth grade. It doesn\u2019t look like much, but this is the pinnacle of my musical career, when I got to play the snare drum in the Red Oak Junior High School marching band. (I had taken two years of piano lessons in elementary school, so I knew how to read music, which is how they picked who got to play drums in band in sixth grade.)<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s a photo of the whole band (I\u2019m in the back row, to the right of my friend Justin Sharpe, who is really tall in this photo and would grow to be 6\u201911\u201d and become a high school basketball star):<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t have a lot of regrets in life, as I think holding onto regret is usually not that helpful. But I do have a few. A pie chart showing those regrets and how much they contribute to my sum total regret in life might look like this, with most of the regrets being tattoos I\u2019ve gotten:<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

That\u2019s not to say tattoos are bad, or you shouldn\u2019t get tattoos\u2014I\u2019m just saying I got some dumb ones, and if you could get them removed as easily and inexpensively as you can get them put on, I would have done that already. Alas.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s that big red chunk of the pie chart, though? That seems to be the biggest regret.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t regret it at first\u2014at the time, I was 14, we moved to a new town, and they didn\u2019t have room for another snare drummer in the marching band. Plus I wanted to play football, which I believed to be \u201ccool\u201d at the time. As I remember it, I had to choose between the two: Band or football. So I picked football. Which, as they say, \u201cseemed like a good idea at the time.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fast-forward a dozen years, and I started traveling, and seeing how much fun musicians were having. I was in the Latin Quarter in Galway, Ireland, one dark, rainy winter, and couldn\u2019t believe how many people I saw out playing or singing music in the streets, busking: A guy with his hat sitting at his feet singing a cappella (maybe just till he got enough money to buy another pint?). A guy with an electric guitar and amp, playing<\/strong><\/a> AC\/DC\u2019s \u201cTNT,\u201d chanting \u201cOI!\u201d over and over, at 10:00 a.m. This full band of young guys, who set up in a busy shopping section and immediately drew a crowd with their cover of \u201cWagon Wheel\u201d:<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

I remember thinking, \u201cWhat was I doing when I was their age?\u201d Answer: Not playing music with my friends, because I quit band in eighth grade.<\/p>\n

This happened many times: In New York subway stations, in Hong Kong, in L.A., in London, and one night walking around Washington DC, running into these guys posted up outside a Krispy Kreme, whose band had four trombones a five-gallon bucket for tips.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Musicians, I realized, have a language they can speak with each other, no matter where they go. If you don\u2019t speak the language somewhere, but you play an instrument, you can jam with anyone.<\/p>\n

A couple years ago, we inherited a piano from a friend. It\u2019s not a nice piano, or tuned, but had I kept up my piano lessons and kept playing, I\u2019d have three-plus decades of piano experience now. Starting from zero in middle age is much tougher.<\/p>\n

My friend Ian visited last year, and when our toddler sat on the piano bench, Ian leaned his left hand around Jay and played the opening notes of Ray Charles\u2019 \u201cWhat\u2019d I Say,\u201d as casually as someone might stir cream into coffee.<\/p>\n

Nowadays, I think of football as something to watch, not play. Music, you can play until you\u2019re 91 years old (at least if you\u2019re Willie Nelson).<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not saying you should keep playing the trumpet or the clarinet for the rest of your life, just because you play the trumpet or the clarinet in high school. But you do have a language you can speak\u2014music\u2014and just like learning Spanish or French, if you stop regularly speaking it, you\u2019ll probably lose it.<\/p>\n

The more important thing I\u2019d recommend is not losing the practice of creating, however you do it\u2014your particular style of playing a song, painting, photography, making videos, writing fiction. If you\u2019re wondering, \u201cAm I creative?\u201d I\u2019d say: If you\u2019ve ever made something that didn\u2019t exist before, you\u2019re creative.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s easy to be creative in the first part of your life\u2014no preschooler ever thinks, \u201cMy finger paintings aren\u2019t very good.\u201d But as life gets more serious, and you have to make time to study and do homework and think about a career, and then start working in that career, it can be much harder to do those creative things you love to do:<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

You may not think much about what you\u2019re learning in band, aside from playing your particular instrument and whatever songs you\u2019re practicing and performing. But there is one really important thing.<\/p>\n

I was out running with a friend who\u2019s a high school teacher, and when he\u2019s not teaching, he plays music. He told me that in class, he can tell which students play an instrument or sing, because they\u2019re less afraid to contribute to class discussions, or raise their hand and offer answers to questions in front of the rest of the class. They\u2019re less afraid to fail.<\/p>\n

Because if you\u2019ve ever played a wrong note, or come in a beat too early, you\u2019ve failed, right? Sometimes it\u2019s a small failure\u2014you\u2019re practicing at home and you get a note wrong. Or it\u2019s a more noticeable failure, maybe in a concert or performance. Either way, you\u2019ve all failed, probably hundreds of times at this point. No big deal, you\u2019re used to it:<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

And you know that it takes a lot of those failures to be able to play your part in a song well, which might look like this:<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Take all those failures and multiply them by every person in your school\u2019s band, and you have thousands upon thousands of failures, and that\u2019s what it takes to make that first good performance of a song.<\/p>\n

For whatever it\u2019s worth, this is also the writing process, and, I think, how you learn to make films, and probably everything else. As the saying goes, good judgment comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgment.<\/p>\n

You may not play an instrument when you\u2019re 35. You may not even like band that much, for all I know\u2014maybe you prefer writing poetry, or cooking, or making Spotify playlists for your friends, or taking photos of trees, or drawing manga characters. I would encourage you to do whatever it is that lights you up, or gets you in a flow state.<\/p>\n

At some point in the next few years, you\u2019re going to be busy with a career, and all the other things that come with being on your own: doing laundry, buying groceries, paying bills, maybe raising a family. You will, believe it or not, still have some spare time. You can choose, as many of us do, to spend all those spare minutes or hours looking for entertainment\u2014scrolling on your phone, watching movies or shows or short videos someone else made, reading essays or 280-character hot takes.<\/p>\n

Or, you can choose to spend that time creating something.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not trying to be a middle-aged guy telling you how to live your life, but I will tell you this: I have had a lot of adventures in my life so far, and some of them don\u2019t require me to even leave my desk. I start with a blank piece of paper or a blank screen, start drawing or writing or moving video clips around, and it always goes somewhere. Sometimes I end up making something that isn\u2019t that great (it\u2019s a first draft!), and I\u2019m kind of disappointed by it. But it always feels like a better use of my time than endless scrolling, or spending a half-hour watching something that didn\u2019t live up to my expectations, and leaves me feeling empty.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not saying you should never be on your phone, never relax, and never watch shows, or movies, or whatever you find entertaining\u2014I\u2019m just saying that as long as you remember that you can create something, whatever it is, you always, always, always have another option. And that it will probably never be a waste of your time.<\/p>\n

\u2014<\/p>\n

If you enjoyed this piece, please consider supporting my work<\/strong><\/a>.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Related<\/em><\/h3>\n<\/p><\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A few weeks ago, Jesse, the band director at one of our local high schools, asked if I might like to come in and speak to his class about creativity and persistence. I dug up my old junior high marching band photo, drew a bunch of charts, trying to get at something that would be […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":44414,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11760],"tags":[4629,27322,1238,2971,27323],"dealstore":[],"offerexpiration":[],"class_list":["post-44413","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-adventure","tag-dont","tag-illustrated-stories","tag-music","tag-playing","tag-quit"],"yoast_head":"\nDon't Quit Playing Your Music - Som2ny Network<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=44413\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Don't Quit Playing Your Music - Som2ny Network\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"A few weeks ago, Jesse, the band director at one of our local high schools, asked if I might like to come in and speak to his class about creativity and persistence. 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