Creative Drive

March 25th, 2026

Hey how's it going hope you're well. I think I got a ramble stewing up here in my noggin. I've been working on the quick EP I talked about in my last post, and it's opened up a clear mental space for me. I wanna talk about it. About something at least. I'll find the plot as I get going.

I spent nearly all of last Saturday recording. I spent a good bit of Sunday tweaking what I recorded too. Just working on one song I'm gonna call "Daily Affirmation" for this project. I haven't spent this much straight dedicated time to making a song in a long time. Usually I work on it for like an hour or something and find a stopping place. On Saturday, I recorded guitar, recorded vocals, recorded a drum track, mixed a bit as I went. I was at it for a long time, and whenever I found a stopping point, I would put it down for like 5 minutes and come right back to it. I recorded the same sections of guitar over and over to make it sound best, and I still might do it again. I broke out my electric guitar for the first time in years to do this. The things that have frustrated me in the past I have found joy in this time, because this time it's just different. I'm not making it to get it heard and liked by the masses and to build a following, I am making it because I want to make it.

This making it to make it is a very simple concept in theory. In my brain, it is entirely revolutionary. Since I was a kid, I wanted to be a professional creator. First it was music, then in high school and early college it was acting, then back to music again. To get psychological about it, I feel like a level of it was not getting enough attention at home (middle child) and seeking this attention elsewhere. I think a big reason I wanted to be an actor was because I wanted to be famous. I don't think I'm truly over that desire. As much as I WANT to be over it, I still regularly have the day dream of becoming a professional pop song writer. I had a day dream about meeting Nate Ruess and it made me smile to think of telling him my friend is a big fan of his podcast, and in that day dream that happened because I was a successful and popular musician. "Successful" and "Popular" kinda go hand in hand when it comes to being a public creator. You can't be successful without being popular. Which feeds the desire to be famous.

So this craving to be popular is deeply lodged in my brain. And when it's that deeply lodged, you can't just think it away. It actually takes practice. And the way I have been creating for a while is not practicing. But actively choosing to make something and actively choosing not to post about it IS practicing. I have told a number of people, which I was initially planning on doing, but I am a rambler, as I believe I have made abundantly clear through these posts, so I end up talking about the things I'm excited about a lot. And I'm excited about this. I'm excited about this website too and the indie web in general, which I have also talked about extensively to people.

I think the start to this shift in mindset would not be possible without this website. After watching this YouTube video and reading the Melon King's "Intro to the Web Revival", I was immediately sold. The whole point was to make this for the creative expression, not for eventually making it into a job. When I got all my links linking to stuff and this website fully running (in a primitive and incomplete state, but still fully running), I was so proud of myself. The design on this is nothing to write home about, but I MADE IT. It was me and I made it. I have so much to learn still, but I learned enough to have something that exists. And I'm not doing it for approval. I'm doing it because it feels good to do. I'm probably not going to have approval for this brand new skill I am picking up. And this got me to the realization that I don't need approval for a skill of mine I have been building on for more than 20 years. And not basing my whole creative process around the need for approval brought the fun back. It brought the desire to do it back. The creative drive was sparked once again. In a way that I had forgotten about.

So I'm doing well. I'm thriving. Work has been slow and boring, which is not helped by the fact that I started taking a new medication that makes me catastrophically tired, but I am in a really good state. I've been more confident in myself around other people and worrying less. This probably has to do mostly with daylight savings being over and the weather being nicer, but being creatively free again has undoubtably had an influence.

On a website-related note, I downloaded GIMP so I can start making actual art for this site (once I figure out how to make a file). On a random interests note, I watched some videos about open source software and Linux today. It seems cool, but I really just use my Mac due to the DAWs that I use. Which did get me looking at Linux DAWs, but I don't think that'll go anywhere with me. Just a fun thought experiment.

So yeah. Stuff is progressing and I'm happy. I'm probably gonna put all three of my current blog tags on this post, which I guess isn't helpful in a way but I touched on a lot of topics that I like to talk about. Alright that should be enough rambling for tonight. Seeya soon.