Happy Haggling

The other day a friend of mine proclaimed…

‘There’s no greater feeling than haggling for something you don’t need.’

The implications of this are obvious and widespread, but I’ll highlight a couple…

-When you engage in this way you can’t lose. Well, you can lose, but you won’t take it personally. Which is a win.

-When you don’t need the thing, you have a heightened ability to sense the seller’s desperation. On the other hand when you’re desperate yourself, it’s hard to properly gauge it from the other party.

-Since you’re not desperate you have all your tools at your disposal…and you’re more likely to be creative and develop even more tools on the spot. And the options are clear, not clouded.

Hum Love on Spotify and Apple

Followed

In real life if you’re being followed you have a sense you’re being followed. A feeling. A knowing. That someone is following you, watching you. No doubt about it. And then sometimes even when no one is following you, you could swear you’re followed.

Online it’s the exact opposite.

If you’ve been putting out good work for a while you’ve built up a following…the social media sites even tell you how many people have clicked your Follow button…Spotify even tells you how many people are listening to your music at this very moment. And yet even though there are plenty of people following you…you feel like no one is following you.

Hum Love on Spotify and Apple

A Little Too Famous

If you release a song and get a few thousand streams everyone is really happy for you. But if you release a song and get ten million streams…

When you get a little too famous, the people (and media outlets) who have known about you for a while but haven’t bothered to comment suddenly start saying how much you suck…now you’ve woken up the beasts. Now some people are talking about hating your band. Now you think ‘everyone’ is out to get you. Now you think maybe it was better when people weren’t saying mean things.

But it wasn’t better back then. You just got a little too famous and started getting a reaction out of a bigger pool of people….which includes the type of people who wait for you to get just famous enough to where they feel esteem and stature in their putdown.

Hum Love on Spotify and Apple

Committing Through The Lull

First Monday of the month, new Hum Love playlist on Spotify and Apple. If you click the heart button it will update automatically for you and you’ll get it a little earlier than the others.

Anything you commit to everyday will have moments and seasons of being uninspired.

Writing, performing, building, connecting…they’re worth committing to but part of the commitment is doing it even when you don’t feel like it, when it isn’t going well, when it’s not your best stuff, when there’s a big deficit in energy and excitement.

Anything worth doing is going to have a lull.

So when it comes you know you’re on the right track.

Hum Love on Spotify and Apple

Telling The Truth

If you get to where you’re going to by not really telling the truth, then who is the person who has arrived?

On the other hand, for wherever you end up, if you told the truth while getting there you can be certain of who has arrived.

Hum Love on Spotify and Apple

Fur and Ponchos

Faux fur never becomes real fur. But…

If you’re a disco band but you dress up like a rock band and play rock songs…you’re not a faux rock band…you’re a rock band.

It’s more like a trash bag that you cut a few holes in to wear as a poncho…you don’t have a faux poncho…what you now have is a poncho. That’s exactly what it is.

Under the umbrella of ‘fake it till you make it’ is the idea that you go from artificial (faux) to the real thing. Rather…I would make the case that you simply go from one phase to another, each of them being equally the real thing.

Hum Love on Spotify and Apple