Mental Health Days

Yep, it’s a bit rocky again out of the blue. There’s a surprise. Not. I was reading an article about bullying and it reminded me of a lot of things.if you survive if, it’s difficult not to become that thing yourself when you misguidedly think your just trying to protect yourself. And I get triggered easily. I can often control it for a while. Months maybe then some random event sets me off, like an encounter with a footpad jumping from the shadows.

I make music for myself but also for people I will never meet most of the time. Maybe they get the best part of the deal as they can imagine me as a far better person than I actually am with out the stress of having to interact with me face to face. I get feedback from them and unlike me, my music travels around a lot of the english speaking world and also beyond it at times. It’s something that I may well still be able to do if I live past the point where I can comfortably stagger out to gigs if I dont go totally gaga. It makes me happier then I would be if I didn’t do it, so I have a bit of a sense of purpose to life. I suppose if I had actually got anywhere near the conventional idea of success I would have have been really insufferable, though I maybe in any case 🙂

I do keep a diary of my mood and what I do during the day too as it helps me keep a bit of a grip on things. its most useful when my mood is very low and I have routines to keep going when i have zero motivation to do anything at all. I do run the risk of staring into space if I am not careful when I am in that zone.

I wish I had the energy to start a band to do some of my own original music in a live format, but I just don’t have the energy to organise it now.

Getting out of bed and recording at home is nothing like having to:
#1 Convince people to play the music you write
#2 Find people that actually have the time and ability to do it
#3 Organise rehearsals at places that everybody can actually get to
#4 Convince people to play what you actually want them to play (not turning say a piano ballad into a blues tune because the song has too many chords)
#5 people that are good but only want to play in a very restricted and limited style, for example will play rock but not if it drifts in to say world music or jazz influence

The list could go to about a #100 but you get my drift. Also need to be local….
It’s the managing to make it possible rather than the playing that is the hard part.