It's About the Effort, foo
On being entitled to the labor but not the fruits of the labor
It's normal that you think your music career isn't going anywhere when you idolize and watch videos of Zeppelin, or Kendrick Lamar, Beyoncé, Bowie, Taylor Swift. Videos of them exist everywhere because they are at the peak of musical fame, talent, and fortune. They have teams of people, hundreds of humans, working for them to make them a success, and they've been performing for decades.
But once upon a time they were up-and-coming, just like you.
There were no cameras on them, other than the ones friends and family had. They played on pots and pans, bought off-brand second-hand guitars from the pawn shop down the road, used their uncle's turntables which he pulled out of a dusty box in the attic, sang and rapped with Radioshack battery powered microphones in the bathroom mirror. And they studied and they worked hard and played and performed and did it over and over again. And after a while with some networking and a metric shit-ton of good old-fashioned luck, they happened upon the opportunity of a lifetime.
It was then the cameras started rolling.
You are comparing their peak to your gestation period.
Don't pressure yourself to meet an outcome. Urge yourself to play, perform, learn, listen, create. And do it as much as you can.
You might never become a superstar like Jay Z or Springsteen. But you will grow and outperform your own self, the yesterday you. And in time, your friend group or local town might consider you musical hero. Or your IG page gets hundreds of views daily because they love hearing your music or seeing your creations. Even the artists you consider “shitty” are putting in years of hard work to make and promote their shitty music.
You alone determine what success is.
Keep moving the bar higher and further, ever so slightly.
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Email: cannondispatchpodcast@gmail.com