Do you ever feel like you’re running like a racehorse…but not getting anywhere?

The app thought it could beat me…but I am stubborn

I can’t recall if I’ve mentioned this before, but one of the things that I struggle with is this inability to allow myself to not finish things. I will give you a little history…

I had the best dad you could ever possibly imagine. But there is one incident that made a scar so deep in me that I still carry it to this day. You know, when you have the best dad, you want to be the best daughter. My need to always be the “good girl” was almost an affliction.

I don’t recall what I was working on…but I have a feeling it was a new play or song or something of that sort. My dad said, as I wavered, “You know, you always come out of the gate with so much energy…but you never finish anything. You just switch gears.”

Ouch! That one sentence had such a huge impact on me that, to this day, I have a very difficult time not finishing things. Even if the thing I’m working on is not serving me. I just can’t let it go.

Anyway, now that you have the backstory, I can put into context what happened this week. One of the apps that I use pretty consistently is called Airtable. It’s basically a spreadsheet on steroids where you can create a database and other cool things.

I have been having this issue for weeks now, whereby if I entered something into Airtable using either my iPad or iPhone…it would not retain the content. I went back and forth with tech support for weeks. Week 17, I figured out a fix on my own! I felt very accomplished in the moment. And then I reflected on how much damn time I spent on it and asked myself, “Did this help move you along in your Six-Month Project?” The answer was no. The answer was, I took something that was annoying me and I finally figured it out. It was my ego that was served and not the project.

And wouldn’t you know it…as I write this recap a week later…the bug has reappeared, so my fix didn’t fix it. Sigh. Do you think the universe is trying to teach me a lesson? 😆

Hands-down, the highlight of the week!

Week 17 was the week that I released “Another Morning.” There were a few little glitches that were completely my fault…and I forgive myself…but all in all, a truly satisfying experience.

The glitch: It was small. I had scheduled a newsletter to go out the day AFTER I released "Another Morning" to my Patreon members, letting my newsletter subscribers know the song was out in the world. Well, I thought I scheduled it for the next day...turns out the newsletter went out the same morning BEFORE it was released on Patreon, so the link to check it out by becoming a member didn't work. Gah!!! 😖

Anyway, it happened. I survived.

Now, because of the technology that I used to share my music, I can see how many people stream or download the song. But it doesn’t tell me who streamed or downloaded it, but at least I can see that people are accessing it. Not knowing the identities of the people listening can sometimes be a bit frustrating because I want to know what people think. And, to be honest, I realize that everyone’s busy, so I don’t always get responses or feedback. And that’s OK…

So when I did get a glowing response from an actual music supervisor, I have to tell you, it made my day. It’s the small moments of validation that I know I give far too much weight to…but hey, I’m human, right? I’m allowed to enjoy a little praise every now and then, lol.

I was a guest on a really cool podcast!

Not long ago, I got a new Patreon member who was so kind and supportive that I clicked on their profile and realized that they, too, were a Patreon creator. Long story short, we connected, and I think we both felt a sense of camaraderie in our journey to create community and also find a way to support ourselves as artists.

I strongly suggest that you go and join Amelia Ray’s Patreon at: www.patreon.com/cw/ameliaray

She is a singer-songwriter based in San Francisco and has completely left social media, which I find so brave and astonishing! Her music is rich, earthy, and gritty, and I find it truly mesmerizing.

Anyway, Amelia has launched a podcast, and I happened to listen in on an episode and was really impressed with her hosting skills. So it was just an absolutely delightful surprise when I received an invitation from her to be a guest ON her podcast!

There was a slight communication snafu. I thought that we were going to be livestreaming on Patreon, but it turns out that she does her podcast on Zoom. Anyway, the full podcast is available for listening HERE.

I think she was such an engaged, generous and confident host in guiding such an interesting conversation. ❤️

The chosen identity doesn’t pay the bills…yet

I’m going to be really honest here: the money situation is causing some anxiety. I know, I know, I know. What about my chosen identity? Yeah, the chosen identity is a really great go-to for my psyche…but so far, it just doesn’t pay the bills! 😭

Anyway, I decided it was time to migrate off yet another mailing list platform because the one that I had just recently migrated to (MailerLite) significantly raised its prices and, to be honest, I was just pissed.

I won’t bore you with the details…but I spent several days and hours re-creating my email templates, my pop-up, my embedded forms for my website, and on and on and on. I am going to be sending out a newsletter to my mailing list sometime in the near future. If all goes well, I’m canceling MailerLite and moving forward with Sender.net. Please send good vibes because I’m so darn tired of this stuff. It drains me and my energy, and kind of puts me in a foul mood.

Sometimes it feels more like thwarting than lessons…

So I mentioned last week that my coach was going to be taking a few weeks off to move himself and his family and gave me an assignment that I was really eager and ready to dig into…or so I thought. I wanted to now venture beyond the music library portal I was using and actually pitch some songs directly to some boutique sync agencies.

That came with criteria that were far more complex than the portal I had put all of my songs into. Basically, aside from master-quality songs (which I have lots of!), I needed to make sure that the metadata was correct ✔️. I also needed to provide sheet music or a lead sheet for the song…OK, that I can do. And then the last component is “stems.”

What are stems? If you can imagine when you listen to a song, and you hear a drum groove and a bass part and a piano, and then you hear some background vocals, and you hear the lead vocal…imagine, if you will, providing each one of those components on its own track. So when you listen to it, and it’s the drum stem, you would literally only hear the drums for that song. Same thing for the piano part. Same thing for a vocal…an a cappella vocal all on its own.

We upgraded our entire studio about three years ago, and with that change, we also upgraded the recording software that we were using and the plug-ins. Without going into the minutiae, many of my mastered songs that are pretty recent were recorded on the old system.

Now, of course, I have all the song sessions from those songs on the new computer. The problem is, while the new computer can open the old sessions, most of the plug-ins have been rendered useless because they don’t function on this new system. I know, it gives me a headache too. So, long story short, I can’t export stems from the original song sessions.

I went on a brand-new odyssey and, yes, I employed AI to assist me. I needed to find a way to export stems from existing songs. Needless to say, it was a brutal, brain-draining journey that ultimately led me to…I don’t think that this can be done.

I will be really authentically, transparently honest here: it really fucking bummed me out. I felt like the universe was persistently thwarting me. I have hundreds of songs recorded…and this discovery meant that I could not pitch them to these sync agencies. It really deflated me, and I had a really hard time finding my chosen identity. 😢

I tell you this because I think it is so essentially important to be honest. Because if you are endeavoring something creative—or even not creative, any kind of new adventure—and you keep coming up against obstacles, I want you to know that you’re not alone. ❤️

Anyway, I continue to seek out options…and there just may not be one because the old computer is not powering on…and we're talking hundreds to find out if it's salvageable, potentially thousands to repair it…if it's even repairable.

I will have to be OK with that. But I’ll refer back to the beginning of this recap…there is this stubborn side of my psyche that believes in my bones that there has to be a solution.

We will find out…