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A string of synchronicity lashed out at me today. Something about 10,000 hours of work to become an expert, references to living in the Now, and the hard work it takes to “make it” as a DIY musician seemed to tie together a theme that’s suitable for me and other creative types. Although I’m sure their base principles would be applicable to anyone else trying to engineer their own lives. What the theme is, I’m having some difficulty coming up for words. But probably when I’m done writing this blog post you’ll have already read it as its title.

The idea of becoming some kind of expert in 10,000 hours is based on the book Outliers that provides research analysis of time and labor spent to become proficient at any given craft. Bear in mind I haven’t read the book, but the notion came about in a conversation I had with my longtime friend Christian.

It would seem, the more we spoke, we were each at crossroads in our respective lives–for him to pursue some career direction in volleyball while for me I was feeling my toes beginning to dig into the sand as a musician. While he had brought up conflicting desires and limitations to sustain and expand his relationship with his girlfriend, the urgency of making ends meet was all too real. I carefully listened to him explain his circumstance and soon saw something in his life definitely had to give in order for something else to come in. When Christian had mentioned his physical training as a professional volleyball player had come to a complete halt, I knew then that now was the opportune moment for him to get into the business side of the sport. Relating to him introspectively I similarly knew I had to get an outlet going for my music and their encompassing ideas if I were to ever give them any chance at bearing fruit. For both of us, whatever wisdom and experience we had accumulated over the years in our respective interests would now carry over into more conscious efforts of planting our 10,000-hour seeds.

On this day I had also finished reading Eckhart Tolle’s A New Earth: Awakening To Your Life’s Purpose. The book was passed on to me by my friend Lucy. Words like God, Presence, Being, and Now were used in the context of invoking an awareness or an awakening from our everyday hustle—a shift in focus to see the other half of the Truth that there are no such thing as ends to make meet. As or without religious abstraction the idea was to realize you have already “met.” And the author does a thorough investigation into the ego and how we’re so subtly but on a massive scale pathologically preoccupied with identity and form—separating the “meeting.” A way to summarize our lives could be said that we spend 90% of our time with stress and cutthroat actions to achieve 10% of it in the feeling of victory or success via an accolade, a status acquisition, or even a minute mental one-upsmanship. Yet each time we reach that 10%, we turn right back around into that ravenous 90% struggling to attain a different success but still of that similar feeling. The author’s solution for chasing our tails, as it were, was to meet the moment at every moment; being mindful of our moment-by-moment actions grounded in a witness perspective would in effect allow our imaginary faculties to help us carry on with our lives stress-free.

On the other hand my friend Scott forwarded me an extensive list of a DIY musician’s “to do’s” via an article that could easily bring to mind the you-know-what’s in the details. Just to call in the stressful other half of the Truth, here’s that list in excerpts:

…making your first recording.

…jamming with your favourite artists.

…get that product out locally, regionally…to the right people at the right time…

…your burning passion that might not be enough to get the job done.

…if you want to be rewarded for your passion, you have to put in an effort and commitment.

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Many situations will arise out of the blue and on the spot.

…secure and pay the copyright owner….

…just being creative takes work.

…find the right time to explore or categorize, that part of it is often a nightmare…

…your gear that you use on stage requires maintenance.

…rehearsing…takes time from your family and your real life.

…be remembered for at least having your art form out there for others to judge.

…in the end our passion for all that we do is is very important.

If you have dreams of “making it” or just getting on the radar be prepared.

Sweet dreams!

Sweet (mad) dreams indeed! So if you’re a musician too who tries to take heed of the above advice, good fucking luck! Oh, and know that you wouldn’t be an expert at any of them unless you’ve spent roughly 10,000 hours on any one of those tasks.

However I don’t think Scott had intended to overwhelm me with just tasks of being a DIY musician. Rather it was to look at the overall list as a journey, and in his words “to set your personal levels of success and set them up stage-by-stage, in effect to appreciate the successes that you do achieve as you move along your path, rather than concentrate on an idealism.” To appreciate the small gains (or grains…like sand…of a sandcastle! That’s it! The title to this blog post will be [click here].) made along the way is sage advice my friend!

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