Why do I blog? — Keep it Creative

I often ask myself why I do this. So this post serves to remind me. Blogging is a bit of a labour of love and it’s hard to gauge how much I get back. I find myself giving myself deadlines and feeling pressure to get things finished, when in fact they are only really for me. So here it is…. for anyone that’s interested… Blogging and why I do it.

This is what stock photography looks like for blogging. I should maybe just use a photo of my actual working environment - which never looks like this.

Who am I?

Why would anyone be interested in what I have to say? Well I’ve kind of won the life lottery when it comes to work. I followed the corporate dollar as much as my personality could and ended up working in a suit for a charity travelling all over Europe. It was a pretty good way to spend your twenties but the sheer boredom of it meant that I had a quarter life crisis and retired at 30 to the music industry to be poor and happy for ever more.

So I’ve been all over; had loads of experiences and made a few big leaps before I even get started on music. Then with music I’ve ticked loads and loads of boxes. I kind of consider this to be what success looks like in the music industry. Spinning plates and muddling through. I feel that this puts me in quite a unique position and I’m able to be honest about what I’ve learned cos I want other people to be able to do the same. The more people that aren’t ‘faking it till you make it’ and being honest about that they do the better this industry gets.

That’s what I’m ranting about, but the blogging started a long time ago. I was travelling constantly for work. When conferences came up on someone else’s project that they couldn’t be bothered going to - I was a willing salesman and powerpoint slinger. In 2006 between May and October I spent less than 2 weeks in my own bed. It was the height of budget airlines(my carbon footprint isn’t proud, but I’ve probably cycled to work more than you… so…. swings and roundabouts) so on my down time I would invariably end up flying off to somewhere to visit someone.

I was so lucky, but it also felt strange. I wasn't able to share it with anyone. I would send emails with a few photos and a few stories, but I didn't like the push notification aspect of it. “look what I’ve done”. A blog allowed me to just shout at the moon without leaning over to strangers on the bus and telling them a travel story.

So between putting photos on flickr and a travel diary on blogspot, I was able to take the edge off of constantly telling friends and family how amazing Italy is.

The process was as fascinating as the content. I was already writing technical papers and articles for a living, so my writing muscles were primed, but I discovered that plunking away on the laptop of an evening with a glass of wine and some anti-pasti in a random hotel was quite a nice way to spend time in a foreign city on your own. Train delays were suddenly an opportunity to scribble in a moleskin. Writing without a deadline was rather pleasant.

The romantic part of my brain let me think I was Jack Kerouac as I huddled on my luggage in an Eastern European train station with a wee can of beer and a pen writing down what was around me.

Eventually I had such a backlog of scribbled moleskins that needed turned into blog, that I just gave up. With only a handful of countries left unvisited in Europe I took some downtime to write a chapter of memories on each country and called it a day. That coincided with me “retiring” from suit life and taking up my music hobbies full time(i.e. I was no longer looking for ways to waste time at work).

I find it good therapy

It wasn't long till I was back at it. The solitary life of writing down my thoughts in the evening when I couldn’t sleep and I wanted to avoid re-watching old films. I don’t quite have mental health problems, but like most creatives, I’m plagued by enough imposter syndrome and anxiety/hangovers to make me chew over some meaningless event or situation. Writing it down like a blog often helps me with that and can quite often let me see the bigger picture to move a project on if it’s a work based thing - or it reminds you just how many things pissed you off before you slept on it. Those one’s stay unpublished :)

The scurge of social media also means that if it didn't happen in the past year and get summarised in a single selfie - it didn’t happen. I spin so many plates and get involved in so many things that I like this format to remind me of cool experiences.

It cures my mansplaining(a bit)

I have a strange brain. I remember facts and I feel an overwhelming urge to drop them into conversation at inappropriate moments. Etymology of words during a funeral. That kind of thing. Anyone that puts up with me finds it mildly infuriating but knows that I find it even more infuriating biting my tongue when I want you to know an interesting fact. Writing down all the stories I want to tell without really pushing them at anyone cures this a bit. Stories get forgotten if you get bored telling them, and writing them down is a great trick for making this not happen. I am probably the number one reader of my own blog.

Programme Notes

I create a huge amount of content. The content I am most proud of - I am itching to explain back stories, thinking and influences. This gives me a forum for that. Even if no one reads it. It gets it off my chest and no one seems to be in a hurry to interview Glasgow’s most prolific music video maker :)

If I had known then what I know now

The window for being a “cool success in music” is really short. I cut my teeth on it pre-internet. We had no map and no “expert panels”. Recording an EP cost about the same as a car. Couple this with the fact that there is an overabundance of privately educated people in the creative arts who get to climb the ladder without needing to work a minimum wage job, and I quite like to contribute to the democratisation of information and content a little bit in the hope that it’s less of a slog for others.

I watch bands fail time and time again for the same reasons. To avoid screaming it in their faces or sliding into their DM’s I write things here.

As soon as you get involved in creativity seriously you start to get paid advertising for all these unscrupulous people selling you pdf’s that promise the one trick you are missing if you just PayPal them $19.99. For every person that finds my site, hopefully that’s one less musician scammed.

I’m a workaholic

I never switch off. I tried various thing when I had my ‘real job’. Nothing worked. I just got more stressed and more annoyed with work. My solution is to enjoy my work. Blogging let’s me feel productive doing something that I can do anywhere. Most of my actual work requires specific software and files and a big powerful desktop, but having something to occupy the mind that just requires a phone or a pen and paper is a great thing.

It generates work

In the world we now live in, you can’t get anywhere without periodically abusing the internet by throwing content after it. This gives me something to post about. Otherwise I would spend my life trying to come up with a witty and topical 140 characters. Having watched and cringed as amateur comedians have done this for years, I don’t have the arrogance to believe I can succeed where they fail. Instead, I post in a form I prefer and then have a photo or a link to share to remind people I’m here.

And as promised…… my actual desk