Yeah, there’s no “without really trying”; you
will need to be trying a lot.
The scariest conversation I’ve ever had
involved a friend telling me that, on my advice, she had invested in another
friend’s business.
While I was unemployed, I took a class, and briefly
did some tax preparation. Seeing the different sources of income and deductions
and liabilities, as well as dealing with my own job situation, really got it
into my head that things have changed. Pensions are rare now, as is starting at
one company when you’re young and retiring from there decades later. People who
had been very responsible savers and investors had suffered huge losses. That
wasn’t just stocks. People believed in homes as good investments, and that
bubble burst.
It just felt like all of the rules were out
the window, and it was as good a time to gamble as any. If you had something
different you wanted to try, and some resources to do it, go for it.
I told her that being supportive of something
that she was already doing. I was saying, “Good for you!” Well, I thought
that’s what I was saying. What I didn’t know is that another friend was also
trying to get something started, and she needed funding, and apparently what I
said sounded like “Go!”
It seems to be working out okay. They both
still have their day jobs, and they have the sides where they are following
their abilities and their passions. It keeps them busy, and more satisfied than
they would be with only the day job, which – well, I better not even go there.
So, it’s not that I was wrong, or I didn’t
mean what I said, but the bottom dropped out of my stomach when I realized I
was responsible for the allocation of a few thousand dollars. Don’t ever sneak
something like that up on me.
I have been thinking about this more as there
is sort of a perfect storm around the topics of money and creative endeavors
now. First of all, there is me wanting to be a professional writer, though
still being much better at writing than at marketing it. There was a storm over
an email thread between writer Nate Thayer and The Atlantic over payment, which
led to many other comments and tweets and blog posts from various writers on
the topic of getting paid for work.
In addition, it is something I think about a
lot with music. The bands that I review are at different levels of
establishment, and they are doing different things to try and succeed. Some of
them may very much hope to get signed by a label, and for some of them that
would be a bad thing.
It’s not an automatic bad, but again, the
rules have changed. Under the old model, it was fairly common that the label
would get the money from record sales, and the band would get the touring
money. That worked for a lot of people. The problem now is that record sales
don’t make the money that they used to, so you get this thing called 360 deals,
where the label is taking from everywhere.
Now, I’m not saying that the label shouldn’t
make any money. The point is that there isn’t as much money now, period, and
you need to know that going in. You are probably not going to get extremely
wealthy. It’s not a reason not to try and succeed, but you should probably be
doing it for more than the money, and also, you need to have the right frame of
mind. If someone offers you a contract, you need to decide its real value. What
are they really offering?
Part of the reason this is a concern for me
is that some of these bands that I will eventually be reviewing, or possibly a
few that I have reviewed, seem like they are being corporately molded, and so
while they could have had a unique voice, they are becoming something not of
their own making. And yes, you can become extremely wealthy being a corporate
product, but not everyone goes down that route successfully either. There is a
limited market, even for that, and it feels saturated to me, though that could
be personal aversion.
Don’t be afraid to read things carefully, and
ask questions, and propose changes. Most of all, don’t be afraid to walk away.
Sometimes you can do exactly what they would have you do on your own, and then
they are not taking a cut.
I was impressed with some of the different
things In Passing has done. They have been creative. Some bands are using
Twitter effectively. Bands set up channels on Youtube, Reverbnation, and
SoundCloud. I can only imagine some of the things that I will be seeing as I
keep this up, and if at some point I see things that are really effective or
not effective, I will post about that.
A lot of them keep their day jobs. I have my
day job. With some of the mailing lists I am on, there is a lot of push to go
into copywriting, or various kind of freelance writing, because “You can be
getting paid right now to write!” Well, that’s kind of true, except that I
would have to build up a customer base, negotiate, deal with people who wanted
to pay me with “exposure”, and it would take up a great deal of mental energy,
which this job does not (and it has good health insurance). That’s my choice.
In terms of whether I will be effective,
getting in where I want to, I don’t know. I had all these things I was going to
do when I got back from vacation, and a cold that I picked up while there has
dragged on, bringing in a secondary and a tertiary infection, and I am really
behind schedule. I can confrim that would have been worse if I was freelancing,
but then I probably woulnd’t have been able to take a vacation.
So, how do you follow your dreams? First,
have your eyes wide open. That’s going to take some courage, but then it should
also inspire some creativity. If you can get that idea that no one else has,
about how to be heard and seen, then go for it. This is the time to be
non-traditional; now more than ever! But we’re creative types, right?
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