please interrupt my life (letter #2)

contents

• please interrupt my life
• single release #1 – nearly two months later
• a small continuing, or becoming the little engine that could

please interrupt my life

on the beauty of ”inconvenience”

A lot of joy is found when we let others change our plans. Close relationships and community aren’t an inconvenience, yet so much of our modern culture celebrates a disciplined self, to the point of isolation.

It’s somewhat insidious, really. The way the joys of community, freely afforded to any participating person, have been sold as inconvenience, while the inconveniences of centering one’s life around achievements has become the dangled vision of joy.

I used to be so determined to see a goal through that I greatly reduced my random opportunities for unexpected joy. Even now, when I have my teeth in a project, my single mindedness can become too much.

Life’s interruptions remind me to be water. Remind me to be present. Remind me to let go, laugh, and take all of this a lot less seriously.

music release #1 - nearly two months later

Analytics as of October 7th, 2026

Spotify

• 572 streams
• 30 playlist adds (listeners who add the song to their playlists)
• 13 saves (listeners who added the song to their library)

Additionally, Apple Music generated a total of 15 streams since release.

My social posting stamina fizzled out toward the end of my 30-day goal.

But building on social media is like a coin pusher game: it slowly builds, seemingly making little difference, until one video pushes all the coins over the edge.

Those videos feel like lottery tickets, and my hysterectomy video was one such ticket. Ask me how to recreate its success? Ha!

All that to say, social media was a good way to speak to my current audience, which is who I plan to center next time, but not a strong source of streams.

The single biggest driver of streams has been playlist inclusions gained by submitting (pay to play) through SubmitHub.

This service is often used by artists to gain the 1,000 streams needed to qualify for royalties on Spotify, and it can also help drive enough popularity to trigger Spotify’s algorithmic playlist inclusion.

This progress toward Spotify playlist inclusion is represented by a popularity checker via SubmitHub, which provides no guarantees but estimates that a score around 30 will trigger the algorithm.

Of the 32 responses I received, 6 curators accepted my song for either playlist inclusion or social shoutout. This landed me on four playlists, with one standout:

"Bars, Trucks & Broken Hearts" had the smallest acceptance rate and largest listening base of any playlist that accepted my song.

The length of time I will be featured on each playlist varies, with the shortest being one month and longest one year.

In total, I’ve invested $90 into SubmitHub for these results.

My greatest challenge has been finding playlists that match the unique style of my song. Most playlists seek songs with a similar vibe or clear genre to create a consistent tone for the playlist.

More often than not, the feedback I received from those who rejected the song was about playlist fit, rather than personal taste or any particular element of the song itself.

My takeaways:

• Playlist placements are powerful, especially when starting out as a new artist. This was a worthwhile investment, and I will likely put another $20 or more in to continue pushing my popularity score up. I would love to get to 30 and see what, if anything, happens with Spotify’s algorithm as an experiment.
  • This should become less important as my audience grows. Playlist inclusion becomes more about reaching new listeners, rather than escape velocity.
• Social media feels like a waste of time because it’s top of funnel awareness that builds over the long haul. I learned a lot through the way I approached my social content and how I’d like to shift moving forward, ultimately helping me figure out how to show up more authentically.
• My music video, arguably, was not worth the money, time, and effort. But it fulfilled a childhood dream and allowed me to create the consistent overall tone and branding for the song from images to social to cover art. I’m proud of what Callista and I made and still plan to create one for each release because I love doing it.

Gaps in my approach:

• I didn’t put any effort into building a local music community. I played one open mic long before the song came out. I plan to attend some this Fall, and I’d like to join a local songwriting workshop or group as well.
  • Not playing an instrument has been a barrier to playing shows beyond open mics, as I need backtracks to have a full set. Regularly practicing piano and learning my own songs (even just as block chords) is a related goal of mind.
• I haven’t given anyone a way to directly support my business yet. This means my next release should consider this more clearly, perhaps promote my Bandcamp page (TBD) to buy the song and have a little merch to sell.

I’ve said it before and I’m sure I will run this metaphor into the soil, this music business is a garden.

A month after releasing my first song, I see tiny little sprouts. These positive signals are helping me gain confidence in my green thumb, so I can plant and grow a garden that feeds me, my family, and more people.

the small continuing, or becoming the little engine that could

An excerpt from a Morgan Harper Nichols poem:

Maybe, you were tired, and you needed to rest
before you could notice what good could continue,
there was aliveness in your small continuing

the small continuing is all I can prescribe to all I have done and the rewards therein. It doesn’t seem like much to simply continue and to do so at a pace tailored to your nervous system but that is the goal. Not to have overwhelming growth you can’t appreciate, but to build slowly like a bird adding twigs to a nest or a worm making its home gloop by gloop.

I look back at my past self and I am amazed by where I’ve come to and I sometimes wonder how I did. But it is this: the small continuing. When the progress is small and incremental, it can feel like you’re going nowhere. But it adds up.

It’s possible to be so thoroughly present in the process that the journey sincerely becomes the joy, instead of requiring the fulfillment of a desire predicated upon an unpromised result to experience joy.

I think we consider faith to be some magical essence in which we’re supposed to blindly believe but I don't think it's that at all.

Faith is the recognition that seeds planted don’t become trees overnight. But that doesn’t mean you aren’t growing. The seed is planted, the tending is the joy, and I leave the rest to All That Is.

With love and badassery,
Conner

~

🌀 listen to my first song release
🔮 hone-in on the world you want to build
🪽 why were canaries used in coal mines?