Oyoyoyoyoy, I hope the stretches between blog posts start getting shorter. Can’t believe how few chances I’ve had to update y’all with everything that’s been going on.
Well, there’s our music video for Party Girl that we worked SO hard on. I’m so proud of and happy about it. AND we got it on LOGO TV starting last week! YES! Such a dream come true to have my music video on TV, FINALLY. Wow!
I had the funny experience of realizing how and why artists can have an awesome thing happen to them and still not be satisfied. Last week I was so excited to hear the video would be on TV, and so amazed when I actually watched it air live for the first time, and yet a few days later, I was having a mood slump, and the fact that my video was on TV wasn’t changing that. I always used to look at artists who were successful and yet still not happy as being semi-insane, but now I realize it can and will happen to me too if I’m not careful! It was another instance of me confirming that happiness simply doesn’t necessarily come from success, even though that’s what I mentally tie my happiness to all the time. Happiness is its own thing, period, and I could be at Madonna’s level and unhappy if I let myself, or I could be at my level and be ecstatic, if I remind myself. 🙂
I think the reason success and unhappiness can be concurrent is that when you’re an artist, you simply don’t see your career the way others see it. I know how much work and waiting and hoping and praying and time it took to get that video on the air, and all of that took a lot longer than the moment I spent watching it air on TV. I spend most of my time WORKING on my career and hoping and worrying and waiting, and very small parts of it actually getting to enjoy some small victory or new step upward. I’m definitely working on standing more in appreciation and gratitude about what I’ve accomplished and all the luck I’ve had and the great people I work with, but the ratio of time spent working to time spent chilling is still huge. Other people live their lives and then suddenly hear that I’m on TV, so all they think about when they think about how I’m doing is that I’m on TV and that must mean constant excitement and smooth sailing. But for the artist, every new step forward is more pressure to get to that next level of success. You’ve gotten a bit of confirmation that you’re worthy, and now you want more. The more successful we get, the more successful we feel we have to become. So, once you’re on TV, you want to be ALL OVER TV. Once you’ve got 50,000 views on YouTube, you want 1,000,000. If someone’s further along in their climb to the top, you want to beat them there. That’s just the way it is. But it keeps us working hard and improving constantly, and that’s the only way to live as a real artist.
More soon. For now, gotta work!