Fear

So why write and record music & place it on my blog? One word; fear. I have lived with a crippling fear of rejection for most of my life. There was not one giant incident that caused this, it was built from the cumulative effect of many small things over many years. The fear of rejection used to cause me to freeze, or simply not do things I would have enjoyed.

I have self sabotaged many opportunities in my past because of this fear. I live today in a place of healing and freedom though. The main reason for recording and making my songs public is not for “likes” or the few “plays” that I might get. It is about standing up to the fear, confronting it & letting it know that it no longer has power over me.

The fear, while mostly under control still lurks, always ready to try and reestablish itself. Only last night, instead of falling asleep I had a conversation with an imaginary foe about how I should not be releasing my music, how I am not good enough. How can I say it is a performance and use a computerized drummer at the same time, how dare I invoke Dave Grohl’s name in relation to such a thing. You can see the nonsense I have had to fight in my head my whole life now.

The thing with my music that allows the fear of rejection to creep in compared to say poetry, or a general blog entry, is that I know music, I love music & I get music & it is massively important to me. If someone tells me my music sucks, or even worse, that my guitar playing sucks, it cuts to the core. You can tell me my poetry sucks, or my writing sucks & I would have no real argument, I don’t know the first thing about either or what makes it supposedly good & thus the negative opinion would be sad but it wouldn’t really bother me. With music though, I know what makes music good, I know good guitar playing, the fear of not being good enough made me keep it virtually private for many years.

It is only with maturity, realizing that music (or art, heck even life in general) is completely subjective & that one persons opinion is no more valid than another, that I have become comfortable with sharing my work. Its not like I’m trying to make a living doing this, I’m having fun with a hobby, creating music that is as good as I can make, if I’m the only person that enjoys it, well that is enough for me. I won’t allow the fear of rejection, especially by people who have unaddressed issues that cause them to act like idiots, deter me from doing the things I love. Yet here I am writing in response to an argument I had in my head last night.

I suppose the question I began this entry with is really is no different to asking why “press” anything, in the end we do because we do, each for our own unique reasons, but we are bloggers & so press we must.

PS If you are wondering what I am rambling about, see yesterday’s post

http://unhiddenlight.com/2013/06/10/song-my-everything/

which was about this song that I wrote & recorded