Breaking the Silence

It has been a long time and I have a thousand excuses. I thought that after we'd had a baby I would write a whole slew of inspired posts about the miracle of life and the mind-blowing, earth-shattering experience it is to embark on the noble cause of raising a piece of yourself. Turns out the idea of putting those experiences into words did something to cheapen them in my mind (but apparently, Instagram doesnt?). I couldn't find the words or the desire to write them down... I also couldn't find the time.

Our "family dynamic" has changed dramatically. Before Praise (our baby) was born, Kristie would go to work during the week, leaving me alone, with my thoughts, for eight hours a day. This environment was highly conducive to blogging. I would wake up, sit down, and write. I've never considered myself a writer, but writing this blog had become therapeutic for me. I had the time and the freedom to write, and so I did.

Things have changed. I have taken over the duties as financial provider and Kristie is heading up home base, which makes my days look different. I wake up, get coffee, and head to the basement, where my office/studio/man-cave is, and I try to prioritize my duties. Occasionally, I can hear Praise and Kristie talking upstairs... it's like a constant reminder of who and what I am responsible for. If I break for lunch, and if I have to be done before dinner (family time has become more important this past year) then that gives me around 6 solid hours of actual work-time. The idea of spending a third of that time writing a blog which doesn't help to pay any bills somehow feels gratuitous.

So I've regressed to micro-blogging, or tweeting, whenever I feel like I have something to say that I would originally have blogged about. This is silly, really, because Twitter is not a forum where topics can be debated or fleshed out in any meaningful manner, unless you're posting links to blogs or essays on the topics being discussed. There is no real context in a one or two-sentence tweet, which means it's almost always going to be taken out of it's desired context. Not good. I need to work on curtailing my contributions to the twitter-sphere... 

Overall, we feel blessed. We didn't know what this parenting thing would look like because to be honest, I'd never made any real money doing the music thing. A year ago I was ten hours away from taking my Real Estate exam and becoming a licensed agent, but then things miraculously started to happen. Doors opened, opportunities flooded in, and I found myself inspired and energetically pursuing music again, but this time it was actually paying bills. I've learned a lot about that. I've learned that I have to make music, that I have to write and produce and create, and that if I do those things, I have a good chance of making our rent payment on a monthly basis. Nobody is setting goals for me, or tasks in front of me, nobody is requiring me to earn a paycheck in any form. It comes down to me being diligent in the tasks God has provided me, which is far more vague and murky and difficult to navigate... but I've learned that when I trudge on through those grinding days of purposelessness, when I actually get the work done, my family is taken care of. Hindsight is everything, and it's taught me each time as I'm walking through something as vague as record-making, "Remember last time when you felt this way? Remember how that turned out?"

So onward I trudge. This time to a new Vocal Few EP. Hoping and praying that I get to do this for the rest of my life and that I don't have to become a Real Estate agent to feed my family. Music is far more profound a medium than land and structures, and even if songs don't sell like they used to (and people would rather spend $4 on a coffee than $1 on a song), I'd rather sell you a song for a dollar than a home for ten thousand of them in commission. It just feels more right.