It happens time and time again. You put your heart and soul into some piece of work; some creative endeavor, like releasing an album. You work on it until it’s as good as it can be and you’re excited to release it into the world and dream of all the sales you’re going to make and how everyone who listens is going to think it’s the best thing you’ve ever made.
And on release day, you nervously but excitedly hit that big ‘Publish’ button and are ceremoniously greeted with wave after wave of…crickets. Well, to be honest, a few people do buy it (and that makes you so sincerely grateful) but it’s not exactly a queue of listeners knocking on the door now is it?
You’ve been here before. At one point you doubted the quality of your work and thought that must be the reason why people weren’t listening—you just weren’t good enough yet. So you went away and you improved. You learned, and you got better at that which you weren’t very good at.
You released again. Crickets still. But those who did say anything told you how good your work is now. People who know, and people you trust to tell you the truth. So now you can’t blame it on poor work anymore. The fact is, you’re releasing into a world that is fully saturated with work and yours is going unnoticed in that ocean of sound. No one really knows who you are.
Exasperated, you write, “I don’t believe I fully put my heart and soul into my craft” in your journal twenty times—like lines on a blackboard.
You work hard, you learn new skills, and you improve on what you’re not good at but let’s be totally honest, you’re just not working hard enough. You have a full-time job to make sure you can pay the bills but every other moment you have should be working on one of these three things:
Learning to become better at your craft (learning).
Actively engaging in your craft (doing).
Finding your 1000 true fans (telling about it).
If I truly do these three things with all of my heart and soul, and if in a year I’m still where I am today, then I’ll just pack it all up and become a furniture maker…!
Maybe I’d be better at talking about my own work if Epictetus hadn’t written this zinger:
These are the signs of a wise man: to reprove nobody, to praise nobody, to blame nobody, nor even speak of himself or his own merits.
Epictetus
This thought came to me after I released my latest album Meditations into the world. If you’d like to listen and download it, please check it out over on Bandcamp.
Stay well,
SJF
Your title sums it up perfectly. Tough, frustrating, and wonderful.
Every creative knows that feeling! And even more so now probably with such an oversaturated market. I often feel the same but I recently received a message from a girl in India that my essay on grief is helping her so much thru the loss of her dad... it was such a powerful reminder that our work really matters and reaches those who need it most. The ego wants praise, approvals etc - but the heart is content by reaching and connecting with a single soul. ♥️