All my music is essentially free. Join my tribe (I call it the Campfire), and I’ll send you a link to download all my albums. If you’d like to give back, just choose one of the options below.
This is my art and I’d be grateful if you’d help me share it with the world.
Subscribe to the blog by email or RSS.
We all tell stories to ourselves. Stories that empower us or stories that cripple us. It’s the voice in your head that tears you down when you can least afford it. It’s the story told by a brutal Resistance.
Thankfully, we can tell ourselves a new story. This exercise was inspired by Michael Hyatt, and I encourage you to give it a try.
Write down the lie — the false story Resistance wants you to believe. Then write down the true story. The one you could change the world with, if only you believed it.
Here are mine…
There’s a strange balance you have to strike as an artist. A balance between too much and too little influence.
Too much influence, and you become so cluttered it’s impossible to create anything unique. This bombardment of outside influence sabotages all your creative efforts.
Why can’t I play guitar more like he does? Why can’t I write more like they do? The colors in her art are brighter.
But too little influence, and you’ll find your creativity running on fumes. Everything starts to sound the same. You only have the well your own experiences to draw from.
If your art is stale, find something new to experience. And if you can’t play a chord progression without thinking you’ve heard it somewhere before, you’d better take a breather.
Schooling beyond 6th grade is entirely useless.
I didn’t say education. I said “schooling.”
It’s like Men In Black. Stare at the neuralyzer (you know, the flashy thing), and forget everything about yourself. Turn in your dreams. Blend in. And grow up.
Beyond elementary school, dreaming is against the rules. Don’t skip the directions. Don’t question authority. Stay inside the lines.
And most people spend their entire lives following directions. They do what they’re told assuming they’ll be fine.
But so often, they’re not fine.
We take on the attributes of our friends.
If they have foul language, ours gets fouler. If they’re drunkards, our lifestyle grows less sober. And if they gossip, we morph into backbiting snakes.
Then again, if they’re brilliant entrepreneurs, we find ourselves dreaming bigger. If they’re overt optimists, we start seeing the bright side of things. And if they’re compassionate, we unexpectedly open our hearts to them.
Our parents knew it to be true. And if you’re a parent, you’ll see it in your kids.
Excuses are a funny thing. They’re like monsters under the bed of life. Because every excuse is real to the person making it.
To the musician not making enough money, piracy really is the problem. To the artist who can’t sell her paintings, it really is the economy’s fault. And to the drug addict, that childhood trauma really did drive him to it.
But we all know that’s bull. And that’s the nature of an excuse.