the analytics of a creative life
8/19; the day after song release
it's very strange to shift from ‘the realm of dreaming’ where all creative ideas are born and sheltered toward manifestation, into ‘the realm of finding out’. Turns out, i much prefer the ‘fucking around’ part. But then, who doesn’t?
ridding myself of unhelpful fantasies has been a quiet quest i’ve pursued this year.
perhaps i don’t need to know every detail of the dream before bonking around in real life. whether it's love and success or the way i feel about myself, i am increasing my discipline for staring a thing in the face as it is.
Including how i feel about my body after filming and editing content of myself for months. Including how i feel about finally, actually, truly planting the first seed of my business garden — the only framing that is helping me continue to show up. Including how i feel about the parts of life i've neglected the last couple years to get here.
it’s complicated.
i am always so appreciative of my friends and family. But this experience has made that support feel like a life raft in an ocean of, ‘what the fuck am i doing this for 🫨’
~
a few thoughts on this process.
i did a lot of things the “right” way. By that, i mean i followed all the conventional advice, from playlist pitching to becoming my own personal content mill.
and i think a significant portion of my displeasure is realizing how much effort i put into the marketing that might amount to very little, if anything at all.
Which of course is business and creativity; it’s all iterative. But again, i am staring the thing in the face as it is. And as it is, the parts of this journey that were, for me, unsustainable are also the parts i’m told i must do to generate interest, audience, and success.
(interrupts my own thought process)
I am approaching this with a poor, zero sum mindset. I cannot expect one campaign's social content to prove its viability. I have made new connections on social; i have created new interested fans there. I know there is value there. And, i put too much into it this go around.
I know myself. I know i would rather build three deep connections (super fans) than 1000 shallow ones (passive listeners). But that involves staring yet another thing in the face as it is: my social anxiety. Which is huge.
i am also dissatisfied because i didn’t listen to my needs all along the way. i did stress myself out with getting everything done. i stood over my own shoulder constantly assessing progress and ensuring i didn’t get too distracted at any point along the way.
and i am so sick of them!! omg leave me alone. why am i never satisfied with my best?
why must i prove struggle and hardship to myself as badges of work well done? this barrier has become one i must hurdle because it keeps impending my gym progress. since i’m never satisfied with my best, i struggle to let myself struggle and be seen in it.
I reached my limit at the gym last Tuesday and sat on the bench, catching my breath as tears rolled down my cheeks. I was so frustrated with myself. I wanted to burst into tears and run into the bathroom. But I sat and I breathed and let the tears stream until I could lay down and press the damn bench. And my trainer, bless him, adjusted the workout to meet me there.
I have to adjust the business to meet me here.
but when i want to run it like a fortune 500 company, only giving what I have to give feels like it’s never enough because i won’t let it be.
and why?
i’ve got the analytics all wrong.
i’m tracking the wrong thing.
it’s not, did i get it done? it's not, did it generate success? it’s, how did i feel when i got there? and what do i need to adjust for next time?
I’ve been feeling like i wouldn’t let myself adjust and it’s made me nervous about the rest of this journey, which is the rest of my (creative) life.
it’s not what (i.e., content). it’s whether i’m actually in it, present, and willing.
~
8/25; a week after release
What a poor sweet baby, panicking post release like a fish out of water. A week after release, I’m feeling significantly more settled.
Literally today I finally got comfortable with posting on social media everyday. It’s continuing to eat away at my perfectionism and tendency to hide the messy middle. (But I don't like bullies. Real sick of the bullies).
I want to have more fun with what I make next. I don’t know how I’ll handle content for the next song yet. But between releases I want to be consistent with fewer videos that I feel strongly about and am excited to make.
Needless to say, I’ve taken a rest — I did no business other than posting to social media all last week — and my head is back in the game, thinking about the next iteration before I’m even officially done with this one.
Writing the diary-entry-newsletter on 8/19 was me following the tail of my own emotions down the word rabbit hole until I stumbled upon the idea of ‘the analytics of a creative life’.
the idea brought my restlessness into focus:
No matter how much my reasoning mind knows this garden of a music business is yet a single squarefoot of tilled soil with sprouting seeds, I still got confused as to why there ain’t a field of sunflowers already.
This is why I love buddhism; it’s so simple. Life is suffering, and suffering is pushing against what is.
The moment I stopped pushing, the moment I remembered that the source of the reflection is me and magic uses physics too, I got down on my hands and knees to marvel at the little sprouts with appreciation and pride.
And I became excited to tend and plant more.
I became present.
When you’re sharing a creative work, you need data that helps you learn from the process and return to it again with greater clarity, freedom, and new hypotheses.
Here's my offerings to that end.
- how many people did sharing this art help me build community with, and how can i prioritize these connections and building more like them for the next release?
- what value did this song bring to people (take notes; find quotes, comments or messages to save)?
- what value did sharing this song bring into my life? how has this process changed me for good; and given what i’ve learned, how will i shift moving forward?
- what avenues of sharing my music did i use (i.e, open mics, planting stickers, submitting to playlists, posting on social for 30 days, etc)? how did each of those feel; what did i learn?
- what did i love about the creation, production, and rollout of this song and what could be improved for next time?
Inside You Are Two Wolves: One Who Loves to Be Creative & One Who Runs a Business
It’s important that the analytics of a creative life not become entangled in the necessary process of evaluating output as a business. For if this business were to never profit, the creations will still be created and shared. That’s the difference. That’s why the analytics don’t transfer.
You can’t use the practical (validation, money, etc) to measure the value of your creativity.
You can only measure how the market responds to it. By the time an audience hears the song (reads the book, sees the painting, watches the movie, etc), its value to you is complete. Hopefully, ideally, the value is now for them to hold and experience and enjoy. The art becomes its own entity, laid upon the perspective of whoever hears it.
You can know what something does for you, how creating it healed or inspired you, how bringing it into existence taught you of your infinite ability.
No matter how lovely someone is, how dearly they share their love of your music, you can’t be inside their experience with your song.
So stop trying to be.
Your perspective is what makes the art yours. Stop asking the audience to tell you if your art is any good, and make something that’s so for your it doesn’t matter — of course it matters, but not so much that the reception would alter the decision to authentically create and share more.
8/26; back to the garden
I hit a deep point of satisfaction. I’ve realized one dream, which is permeating the idea within myself that I can complete any dream. And so I feel an aliveness as I look over the creative projects to come.
I released a song. When I was swept up in results, I couldn’t feel the satisfaction of that simple truth and accomplishment.
Now I’m back in the garden, holding all my seeds with a child’s delight over what I can grow.
With love and badassery,
Conner
