2017 had nothing against you…and nothing for you. 2017 is a year and years can’t giveth or taketh away.
And we know this. Duh.
But all the sarcastic snark of ‘2017, why were you so bad to me’…yes, I know, it maybe a bit of a joke, but it serves as another subtle storyline that pushes responsibility away from us as opposed to bringing responsibility closer.
The successful people and artists we all look up to are the type of people who pull responsibility as close to themselves as possible.
They didn’t expect anything from the year 2017, they simply took action.
They don’t expect anything from the year 2018, they are simply, currently taking action.
2018 has nothing for us. But we have lots for the people we interact with and the world around us.
It’s probably a great way to start the year, getting down to it.
We all have some things we’re very aware we need to get down to…despite the fear, anxiety, distractions, fluff, sidebars, pitstops, excuse 1, excuse 2, excuse 282390312.
Right now today you can’t build a mass culture movement, or one that has lots of people or subscribers or customers.
The only thing you can work on today and build is a micro culture. A very tiny specific culture.
And as we all know, all mass culture movements (in music: rock n roll, disco, grunge, etc) start as micro. So micro, tiny, specific is worth working on…it’s the size of culture you must have first before mass can happen.
The Beatles: Eight Days A Week- The Touring Years came out last year but I watched it for the first time last night.
It streams on Hulu but you can rent it at all the other places…do what you need to do and watch it.
It’s frantic and slow at the same time.
But here’s one of the main things…
It’s not that you’re too busy, it’s that you don’t write enough…and thereby you’re songs aren’t good enough.
Beatlemania was happening and their release schedule was one single every three months and an album every six months.
Now in all caps.
BEATLEMANIA WAS HAPPENING AND THEIR RELEASE SCHEDULE WAS ONE SINGLE EVERY THREE MONTHS AND AN ALBUM EVERY SIX MONTHS.
Oh and by the way those (original) singles every three months were songs like Can’t Buy Me Love, All My Loving, Please Please Me, From Me To You…the list goes on.
And the albums (which for the most part DID NOT have the previous singles on them) were albums like Meet The Beatles, Hard Days Night, and Help.
I can’t stress this enough…they were experiencing the busiest schedule ever known to a band and never ever ever let the writing fall to the wayside…never didn’t make time for it.
They just loved writing (listen to Jerry Seinfeld on Howard Stern and Jerry tells his Paul McCartney story that ends with Paul saying “we just loved to write”)
Watch the documentary. There’s a million things to learn and remember…and the performance of the song Help is maybe the best I’ve ever heard them ‘live’.
Dive in. It’s all there.
(Here’s a link to the full discography and release schedule. It’s mind blowing. Now let’s get back to work.)
Some people are already back to work. The holiday(s) is seen as something to get through, something to bear while the motto of “there’s so much work to be done” is still at the top of the priority list.
Others use December as an excuse to take a whole month off of work. Well, not actually. Some in the music business merely say “the music business closes down during December” as a means to only selectively respond to email the feel like responding to. And letting the rest wait till after the New Year.
Which segues into the idea of life-balance.
Balance of work, life, holidays, friends, family, goals, kids, spouse, yard work, paying bills. The list goes on.
I’d like to offer up a different twist. Perhaps it’s just different language to say the same thing…but it says something different to me so here goes.
Life imbalance…pointed in certain directions at certain times.
I think of it like on a teeter-totter. It’s REALLY hard to get both people up in the air equal heights off the ground. You’re in balance and then a little out of balance…in balance for a few seconds and then way off.
Balance is an elusive (perhaps undefinable) point.
So I’m shooting for imbalance. Where I put all the weight on one end of the teeter totter and then simply point my vision where it needs to be at different times.
I.E….When I’m working, I’m all in. I’m not thinking about “am I working too hard, should I be working less hard in order to have balance somewhere else…how much work time is too much work time”.
When it’s time for vacation mode, it’s vacation mode. I’m not doing work or fixing things. I’m not searching for balance whatsoever…I’m fully IMBALANCED toward vacation.
And that’s really it, rather than searching for some perfect metric of balance its…how can I be FULLY IMBALANCED toward the thing I’m currently doing?
Don’t get me wrong, I haven’t arrived. I’m still being transformed by this idea. But I’m way better at it than I was ten years ago.
And I’m not against finding “balance” either. But flipping the semantics has been helpful to me.
So enjoy today. Enjoy tonight. Fully. What would it look like to be completely imbalanced toward tonight, to be completely partial and biased toward the now?
