Working Through Writer's Block

I have a confession.

I’ve talked about it with my wife, but I’ve mostly avoided saying it in public: I haven’t been able to finish a music project in well over a year.

I still pick up my guitar and play. I still come up with incomplete song snippets, and record ideas as they hit me.

But I haven’t been able to break through the mental barrier of mixing, mastering, releasing and shooting a complete video for my music in…a long time. I’ve tried, several times, to finish. But there’s a particular talking point that my inner critic has on a broken tape loop, and it’s quite loud: “you suck, and you’ve failed.”

I want to take that apart for a second.

“You suck, and you’ve failed.”

No, I don’t think I just suck at music in general. I’m very competent at music, songwriting, recording, etc. But for many years, my main goal was to be a Composer for Video Games, and at that thing, I didn’t get to where I wanted. When I listen to my work honestly, and more importantly, when I listen to what my colleagues are producing, I just realize that I’m just not there. I have some stuff that I’m proud of. I did some really cool projects. I made some awesome friends. But I also went to college for this thing. I changed careers from a decent paying job (that I hated) to do this thing.

When my inner critic says that I suck…that’s what it’s getting at: that I put all this time and effort and money into this thing, and ended up good at the thing, but not good enough to be “successful”, when the goal was to make a living doing it.

But the thing is, I’m in a different place in life. I’m married, we’ve got kids, we’ve got bills, etc., and I haven’t been building my business for a long time prior to those things. This was a mid-career change. Additionally, I would still be freelancing if we had been able to realistically work something out to extend our time in Germany. We couldn’t, and that required our family to shift gears.

If someone else were explaining this and asking for advice, I would immediately tell them that their expectations are too high. That’s a lot of change for anyone, much less a family.

And yet, it’s still there, nagging at me. I don’t give myself the same break I would give someone else.

And I’m not looking for sympathy. These thoughts are all bullshit, and I’m aware of that and working through them. I just haven’t gotten to that place where it’s all “in perspective.” Every time I try to finish and release music, there’s this twinge of pain with that nagging voice.

I haven’t quite found the path out of this tunnel, but I’m starting to see some light on the walls. I have made some progress towards healing. I finally have the studio set up again and ready to record. It’s much more organized and functional. And my wife has been encouraging me to brush the dust off and finish some songs that she’s liked for a while.

The truth is, I don’t really know where I’m headed creatively. My current day job is pretty awesome. It’s broadly creative, though certainly not what I would’ve guessed even 6 months ago. It’s challenging, the company I work for takes care of its people, and I work with some really nice coworkers. It doesn’t have a thing to do with music, but that’s just part of what life is for me right now.

I also have a whole library of tracks that I really do love, and want to finish and get out to the world. I also have 3 songs that I collaborated with some friends on, that I am really proud of, and want to get done. I hate that I’ve let them down for so long.

Some of this may just be the fact that releasing music feels so much like the career that I wanted, that it’s hard to separate that back out to make that just be “fun” again. And yet, the act of making music doesn’t really feel complete if it isn’t shared.

One of the things that I’m trying to tackle is perhaps a change in output style. I’ve had a Twitch account for several years that I’ve never put enough attention towards. I’d like to explore streaming there with a community-focused musical output. Just something to break the old patterns, and approach things in a fresh way.

I’m also…well…I’m writing this blog post to the world. It’s a step, and I’m going to keep making them.

If you are a creative of any kind, and you struggle with any of this, I just want you to know: you’re not alone.