Tag: life

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5 things to consider when planning for 2018

This morning I woke to discover no less than three inches of snow had fallen in the six hours since I last looked outside. After cursing at the sky for a few moments in hopes that whoever or whatever is up there could understand my frustration over winter’s inevitable arrival, I glanced at my calendar and noticed that the year is nearly out. In less than two weeks Christmas will have passed and we will all be killing time as we wait for the new year to arrive. Are you ready? I’m not.

Working online is a constant battle between what you want to be doing and what cultural trends demand that you do. Maybe you want to write a daily editorial on something that matters to you, but you also need to exist on social media, actively market your existing work, and plan for what you will do over the next several days, weeks, months, etc. Heck, I spent more than three hours of my weekend scheduling tweets to run during the holidays so that I might spend a little more time with family and a little less staring at my phone (note I said less and not ‘no time at all’ because – let’s face it – that simply isn’t a reality for most right now).

So there I was, avoiding the cold and contemplating the approaching new year. The one thought running through my mind over and over was what it was I wanted to do in 2018 that I have as of yet been unable to accomplish. I’m sure many of you have or will find yourself internally debating this same question in the days to come if you have not already begun to do so. Most of us never thought we could get a foot in the door of this business, so usually we’re pretty happy just to be here in the moment working on whatever is immediately in front of us, but we owe it to ourselves to look up and think about what could lie on the horizon. It took a world of belief in yourself to get this far, so you – and I – can’t stop now.

Here are a few things I encourage you to think ask yourself when contemplating the places you will go in the year ahead:

Is what I’m doing right now making me truly happy?

No one gets into music because they dislike music, but just because you’ve gotten your foot in the door or found a role that helps pay the bills does not mean your journey has to come to an end, or even stall. We have all spent our lives being told that next to no one makes it in the entertainment business, and because of this we have a tendency to not want to risk what little success we have already found. This may be good for the sake of security, but in the grand scheme of existence all you are really doing by not chasing after exactly what it is that you want to do is restricting a part of yourself. You are preventing yourself from becoming the person you feel you were meant to be in order to please someone or some thing other than yourself. That may provide short term happiness, but it will absolutely create longterm regret. 2018 should be the year you focus in on what makes you happy and pursue it with all the strength you have in your bones.

Am I making the most of my time?

Laziness is a disease that infects us all to varying degrees. What few people will tell you is that the extent laziness impacts your life is entirely in your control. Just like how we all have a habit of settling for the first opportunity that comes our way we also have a habit of wasting time we know could be better spent focusing on our goals. Maybe you tweet too much (guilty), or perhaps you scroll Facebook even after complaining to everyone you know about how awful Facebook is these days (also guilty). Maybe you sleep until the last possible minute every morning and rush to work without eating a good breakfast or exercising (guilty again). Whatever the case, there are things you do on a regular basis that deep down you know are nothing more than a waste of time and resources. Identify those elements in your life and set to minimizing them in the new year. I’m not saying you shouldn’t relax, but if you feel something you are doing is not right you need to listen to that sensation and correct your path.

How can I work towards my goals without sacrificing something I need (work/money/etc)?

Reaching almost any goal requires some kind of sacrifice on your part, but you have to be smart about what you sacrifice or else you may get yourself into trouble. If your passions lie outside your current workplace and you have no other way to make money then you probably shouldn’t quit your job to pursue your dream full time. Dreams require money. Life requires money. You have to make sure your needs are met in order to have the mental clarity needed to pursue your passions. I like to say people should sacrifice within reason, or sacrifice what they are able, as long as it does not interfere with their quality of life in such a way that they are doing harm to themselves and/or their families.

What can I do to improve life for those around me?

If your bucket list for the new year reads like the agenda of a person who has the world’s biggest ego then your brain is leading you down a broken path. Happiness in life comes from much more than personal gain. You know that saying about how it’s cold at the top? People say that because they often reach the pinnacle of their personal journey and realize they have left behind the people, places, and things that mean the most to them. Victory doesn’t have to be a lonely thing, but you have to be conscious about your actions if you wish to lift up everyone around you in 2018. Helping others often improves happiness far more than personal accomplishments, and it does so while developing better relationships with those who mean the most to you.

How will reaching my goals for 2018 help me in 2019 and beyond?

Life is about the journey, not the destination, so you shouldn’t be looking at 2018 and thinking it will be the last year you ever have goals. Knowing where you want to be in two, five, or even ten years can help you figure out what you need to do in the coming months in order to achieve your long term goals. Once you reach them, set more and repeat the process over and over again until you die. Life is for the living. Keep your head up, your hopes high, and never let a bad day, week, month, or even year deter you from chasing after the things you want.

It’s important to note that not all goals have to be long term. If you want to eat the world’s biggest slice or pizza or work your way to running a 5k those things can be done in a relatively short amount of time. My advice is to balance the big goals with smaller, more easy to accomplish ones so that completing those tasks will help keep you motivated to fight for the bigger picture.

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News

The secret to figuring out your life and career

How many times has this happened to you: A day like any other is occurring when suddenly, without warning, you are attacked by every fear and self-doubt imaginable. You worry about deadlines, bills, money (or lack thereof), friends, appearances, diets, mental health, family, things, stuff, and a whole lot of additional nonsense too extensive to list in full here. These moment of panic happen to most, if not everyone trying to navigate the often treacherous landscape of existence, and most find they have no other choice than to endure such moments and hope they quickly pass.

If this applies to you, please do not fret. It applies to me as well, and probably every other person who dares click on this page. This is not the biggest website on Earth, but we do have visitors, so believe me when I say you should not feel alone because the fact you and I are connecting through these words now is proof there are many who suffer from these moments of uncertainty. If you only take one thing from this post please know that is that you are not alone in these struggles.

This brings me to the point of this post, which some of you may have already figured out. The secret to figuring out your life is accepting the fact you are nothing more or less than a constant work in progress. Happiness and success are journeys, not destinations, and the same can be said for anything else you may feel you are lacking right now in life. You might not be chasing your dreams the way you wish you could, but it is important to realize being able to chase your passions at all is something the vast majority of the 8 billion (plus) people walking this planet would kill to do. By simply knowing there is more in this life for you than what you have right now you are already miles ahead of most, and you will get further ahead still in time.

So embrace the chaos, my friend. Embrace it with the recognition that you have to wake every day and do the same, all while still pushing toward a better tomorrow. Some days you will get ahead, and if you’re lucky that good fortune will extend for weeks or even months, but at some point the pendulum of life will swing in the opposite direction and you will need to fight through that as well. This battle is yours and yours alone, but it is important to remember we are all fighting our own version of this battle in our individual lives each day. The wages of this war are often hard to see on the surface, but the exhaustion fighting to get ahead can cause is easy to see in the paths those around you inevitably fall into when their will to continue onward begins to breakdown. It is up to you to choose how far you go, and if you want to see your dreams through then that is entirely possible. Just remember that there will be setbacks, often far more frequently than you find success, but those setbacks only hurt you and your ability to achieve more as much as you allow. If you refuse to be stopped and wake every day battle ready you will, in time, find what you seek.

Through all of this you must keep your head held high for it is the only way to survive. You are worthy of the things you seek, but they must be earned each and every day.

James Shotwell is a ten year veteran of the music business. He is currently the Director of Customer Engagement at Haulix, the world’s leading promotional distribution company, as well as the Web Editor for Substream Magazine. We don’t like telling people what to do, but you should probably follow him on Twitter.

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News

People need to see ‘the process’

Recently, I came above the image at the top of this post online. The description read, “No one ever sees the process.”

At some point in the last decade the focus of promotional materials pivoted from an exploration of the art itself to something more focused on the personalities of those behind said art. The problem is, there is a lot more that goes into most of it than just someone’s personality. You may have heard a saying about how the funniest people often feel the most pain, and the same thing goes for music. Those able to make others feel better often do so by first trying to heal themselves, but just because you make others’ pain go away does not mean yours will too.

The same thing can also be said for writing and any other part of the music business. We’ve all succumb to this temptation of believing people’s personality is wholly representative of who they are. Maybe they’re the quirky Twitter commentator who has held a longtime publicity job, or perhaps they’re the angry critic whose takedowns of music notables has paid their bills for last five years. Maybe they’re a musician who sings about exorcising demons so we believe finding peace is possible, or maybe they’re a really positive promoter who always thinks about the artists on the come up. We learn to see people as caricatures because it’s easy both in the short team and over the long haul. When we get close things tend to get messy.

Now if we all do this and we all know we do this then why is it so hard to break the cycle? When did it become taboo to let your flaws be known? In an era where the idea body positivity is finally getting the kind of widespread acceptance it has always deserved we seem to have become comfortable allowing the confidence we have in our outside appearance speak to our confidence about other areas of life. We see a smile or hear a laugh and think, at least in some small way, that person’s life must be pretty good. After all, only people who have figured out something about this crazy thing called life could have that kind of expression.

I too have fallen prey to this kind of thinking in both of the ways described above. I have taken people’s personality as a sign of their mental and physical health. I have also used my personality to mask my struggles, such as hiding pain with jokes and writing about nonsense when really there is something very specific I wish I could discuss. The simplicity of only understanding a person or thing enough to categorize them as something in your head (good, bad, beautiful, ugly, smart, funny, etc.) is a plague and it’s making us lose connection in an age where we claim to be more connected than ever.

To combat this in my own small way I started sharing my story, warts and all. It was not easy at first, but in time it got easier. I challenged myself to write about myself every day and every time I told a story I tried to add at least one detail unique to that story that told people something about me. Maybe it was a way I thought about some bigger concept, or perhaps it was just a turn of phrase. Sometimes I detailed the things I ate and why, but other times I would just mention a song and its inadvertent relevance to whatever events were unfolding.

You know what I found? The more I exposed my true self to the world the more people seemed to give a damn. All the pushback and negativity I expected to encounter never amounted to much, if anything. Instead I was inundated with messages from people of all ages, some of whom were complete strangers beforehand, telling me how much they connected with some part of my story.

They say in marketing you only have a few seconds to grab someone’s attention or you may never get such an opportunity ever again. That may be true when it comes to physical products, but in the game of life and art the real success is found in strong, lasting relationships. It’s not just about grabbing someone’s attention, but connecting to them on a level so deep they hunger for they grow to have a kind of dependance on that connection. A longing, if you will. And you,  the creator, will feel it too. Because at the end of the day all we have for sure is one another, and there is peace to be found in the communities we build together.

Whether you’re an artist trying to bring attention to your work or simply a person trying to connect with the world around you, the clearest path to success – not to mention the only real chance at happiness any of us have – is through true expression of self. Let people into your world, show them ‘the process’ of being who you are and working towards who you want to become. Allow people to better understand that they share this journey called life with you, and through doing so hopefully inspire them to create as well. Even if all you do is entertain them at least you’ll know they’re taking in something real and true and representative of the struggles you overcome to do whatever it is you do.

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Job Board News


Learning to trust ‘The Pinch’

Next March will be a major occasion for me. I don’t know the date specifically, but that month will mark seven years of full-time employment in the music industry. I will be thirty when it happens and, hopefully, it won’t be the last year that I get to celebrate.

I still remember getting the call that changed everything, and it could not have come at a more opportune time. My friend and frequent collaborator, Ben Howell, was seated across from me inside a gas station in rural Arkansas when my cell phone rang. We had spent the night in a motel we could barely afford after my car blew a rod and left us stranded on the side of the freeway the night before. We were broke, hungry, upset, and – according to a kind mechanic who woke us to break the news that the car could not be fixed – stranded.

When the call came in, I was expecting the worst. If the past twenty-four hours had lead me to believe anything it was that the music industry might not be as interested in me as I was in it. Ben and I had spent the several days prior attending SXSW in Texas, which was fun and filled with networking, but ultimately did not provide any leads to paid work. Then the debacle with my car happened, not to mention the fact we were over one-thousand miles from home and several hundred miles from anyone we knew in a town of less than 1,000 people that was not easily found on a map. If the universe or God or whatever really gives people signs, this felt like a big one.

But then I answered, and within a few minutes I was offered a thirty-hour a week job in Boston at a music discovery startup that wanted to leverage my writing talents to help grow their business. It was exactly what I had always wanted to do, the very job I felt I had been training my entire life to do, and here it was being offered to me at a rate that would allow me to pay my bills and live away from my parents. I excitedly told Ben the news, but considering the fact everything good I had to say would do nothing to free us from our Arkansas predicament, he was less than amused.

Several years later, trouble struck again. The same job offer that brought me to Boston turned into a source of constant trouble after the business ran into trouble securing and maintaining investors. Weeks would pass without anyone below top ranking staff being paid, often with a handful of people being furloughed (a fancy term where you’re not really fired, but you’re also not getting compensated for any recent work you’ve done). If us lower lower employees did get paid it was usually a fraction of what we were owed, with promises that everything would come to as us funds were made available.

After a months of these erratic fluctuations with cash flow the company came to a crossroads where those in charge either had to close things entirely or cut the staff to a small skeleton crew. They chose the latter, keeping me on board, and cut more than a dozen people. They also sold our longtime offer, which was a sprawling space just outside of Boston, and moved the remaining eight employees into a shared working space in a different town. I soon found myself working in a windowless room smaller than my childhood bedroom with another individual, and between the two of us we were doing the work a team of six or more had been assigned just weeks prior.

As humans, we are often able to sense trouble is on the horizon. Something in our DNA alerts us to the fact that we are standing on unsteady ground and need to make changes. I could feel that uneasiness when the Boston gig lost its main office, then again when I found myself spending eight hours in artificial light working for a company that might not be able to pay more for the time I was putting in. To make matters worse, the financial uncertainty had put strains on my home life, including my relationships. I knew something needed to be done, but I was so set on continuing to work in the music business that I refused to sever ties until something else came along.

It was on a day like any other, tucked away from the sun in that tiny office shared office with bills piling up, that my life changed once more. For reasons I still don’t fully understand I chose to contact Haulix and inquire about their marketing efforts. I think my interventions were to attempt securing freelance work to cover bills while my primary job found funding, but after only a few email exchanges I was offered a role in the company that matched the pay I was supposed to be receiving from my current career. Better yet, I could work from home.

Over four years later, I still have that job at Haulix, and my position in the company has grown over time. There is still a lot of uncertainty about the music industry and where it is headed in the years to come, but for now we are a leader in our market and a trendsetter for promotional distribution. I would never dare take credit for all of that, but I do like to think I have found a home in this business that will welcome me as long as it can afford to do so. In this business, that is as close to ‘making it’ as any professional can hope to come.

But recently, something changed in another part of my life. After sever years together my partner, who only became my wife in the last year, decided she needed to leave. It hit me as a complete shock, one which I am still recovering from as I write this entry. In a moment I needed to find a new home and a new life without her. I never planned on having to do the latter, and I had yet to even consider where we might move next. Now I needed answers quickly, but I had no idea where to start. I packed my belongings, and in the process split our possessions into two piles of stuff.  I loaded my cats into my car and headed to my parents’ home three states away so that I might get out from under the roof my wife and I once shared.

I would be lying if I told you I wasn’t scared about the future. The thought alone keeps me up at night. My brain tells me that if I could not predict her leaving me then there must be other things on the way in my life that I don’t foresee at this point. Maybe I lose my job due to an evolving industry, which would make me an unemployed divorcee on the edge of turning thirty who currently lives with his parents. The likelihood all that comes to pass is very low, but still — it could happen and that is more than enough to prevent me from finding any sense of peace.

But last night I had a thought, and that thought lead to this entry. Every time I have found myself cornered  in ‘the pinch,’ which here means any situation I do not know my way out of, something happens to renew my faith in the path I am on. Sometimes it comes in the form of a phone call, an email, or maybe just a conversation with a close friend about how you’re really feeling. When you find the strength to admit you do not have control over the situation, but continue to do everything in your power to influence it in a positive sense, change happens. It might not be what you thought you wanted, and it might demand sacrifices on your part, but your path is much longer than it appears to be at this moment. You have more stories to write, more adventures to go on, and a lifetime of memories to make. I do too, and sometimes I need to remind myself of that.

Trust ‘the pinch’. Feeling pinched by life does not mean you made the wrong choice, it just means you are due for a change. Whether you believe it in the moment or not, change is good for you, and if you continue to pour your heart into everything you do the changes in life will not stop you from becoming the person you aspire to be. Just believe in yourself and it will all work out in the end.

James Shotwell is the Director of Customer Engagement for Haulix. He is also a ten-year veteran of music journalism, host of the Inside Music podcast, and a frequent commentator on the future of the music business. You should follow him on Twitter if you enjoy business talk, cats, The Simpsons, and in-depth discussion of the latest Law & Order: SVU episodes.

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News

This ‘one for you, one for them’ exercise will change your life

The most common question I am asked by people aspiring to find employment in the entertainment industry is how anyone can ever find the time needed to work on whatever passion project, band, book, record label, etc. they hope to build into a career.

While I hesitate to say there is any answer that can apply to everyone and their individual journeys, there is one approach to chasing dreams that has worked for more people that I know than anything else.

The ‘one for you, one for them’ approach to dream chasing revolves almost entirely around time management. Let’s face it: Most of us do not have the ability to quit our day job and pursue whatever it is we are passionate about full-time. ‘One for you, one for them’ recognizes this fact by embracing your work schedule and demanding you still make time for yourself.

Here’s how it works:

At the start of each week, sit down and write out a list of goals for the days ahead. Be specific, and make sure to categorize each goal as being something you want to accomplish for work, life, or your personal goals. You may never be able to perfectly balance your list and that is perfectly okay. What matters most is that you set clear goals for your personal development at the top of the week so that you may then begin scheduling time to work towards accomplishing those tasks. Maybe you need to get up an hour earlier three days this week to make sure you write X amount of words, or maybe you need to set aside two nights where you stay in and work on your business plan. Maybe you need to cancel your weekend plans because that is the only time when you’ll be able to focus on songwriting without having to worry about the next deadline your have at the office.

Approaching life with a ’one for you, one for them’ outlook reinforces the idea that you are not living solely to help other people profit. You are more than a cog in some corporate machine. You know this and I know this, but until you take steps toward changing your life everything is more or less going to remain exactly the same. You can’t abandon your current responsibilities because that is not how a professional behaves, so instead you must find a way to create the time needed to develop into the person you hope to become. It’s not going to be easy. Even if you could run from all your current commitment the journey that is this business is never simple. The road ahead is tough and you’re going to need people — not to mention finances — to fall back on. Be bold, but smart, and always be asking what more could be done to position you for the life you want to lead.

Is ‘one for you, one for them’ another way to say time management? Yes, but it goes beyond that as well. Being able to make time for your passion projects matters very little unless you actually get to work on said projects. In order for this exercise to become habitual you need to apply it to your life on a regular basis. The only path to success is through continual trial and error that, eventually, gets you to where you want to be.

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News

Making the most of working on a holiday

Today is Martin Luther King Jr. day in the United States. Unlike Christmas, when the vast majority of citizens are given the day off work in order to be with family and friends, this day is a bit trickier. Schools are closed. The postal service and all other government offices are closed. Banks are closed, too.

Everything else, for the most part, is business as usual.

Unless your job falls into one of those categories mentioned at the very top of this post you are probably stuck at work right now just like us. Your social feeds will be filled with contacts who managed to get away for the day, but you, like us, have not. You need to work.

The problem with working on holidays like today is that you never really know who else is going to be working. The likelihood of your emails being read or your calls being taken today is lower than it will be on any other Monday in 2017, but still – you have things you need to accomplish.

With all this in mind, here are a few suggestions we have on how to make the most of your day at the office (while everyone else is busy having fun):

Review your progress on current goals

Most Mondays are so busy you barely have time to get situated before you’re pulled into a day of conversation, phone calls, and email, but today is different. Today is moving at a much slower pace, which means you should be able to step back and assess precisely what it is you are doing with your life. Are you still on track to achieve your professional goals? How about personal ones?

Get caught up

This can pertain any task big or small. If there is something you have been putting off because it’s too hard or boring or some combination of the two then today is the day you make a change. Do that thing you don’t want to do and get it out of the way.

Plan ahead

While things are quiet, pull out your personal calendar and begin outlining the next several weeks/months of your life. What do you need to do, and when will you make time to do it? Should you be doing more? Less? Figure it out.

Educate yourself

The world is changing much faster than we realize. Your field of expertise is likely undergoing a major evolution right now and you need to stay atop the latest trends, as well as any new developments. Consume editorials. Look up reports on consumer behavior. Check news feeds. Get caught up on your business before your business passes you by.

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News

“I’m Quitting Music. Well, Kind Of…” – On Creativity and Change

Everyone who finds even a tiny bit of success in any field has no doubt worked their butt off to reach that point. Music is no different, and some might say it’s harder than most fields in terms of finding success, but just because you quote/unquote ‘make it’ in some way does not mean your life will get any easier. As people, change is part of our DNA. The same inexplicable power that caused one cell to become two, then three, and so on until people were formed lies in you now, and it thrives on change. We must change in order to grow, and we must grow in order to truly live. This post, written by our good friend Ian Baldwin, discusses the point in life where one must realize change is necessary.

This past week I made the decision to sell my drum kit. In the past year I have made playing drums less of a priority. I’ve been focusing on buildingmy business, learning photography, and spending time with my wife as well as friends and family.

We only have the capacity to do so much; make what is important to you a priority and don’t spread yourself too thin.

I decided to cut out drums to focus what matters to me most; connecting people and communities through design. Drumming was a huge part of my life up until about a year ago so I felt like I had to write something to close this chapter of my life.

A Brief History of My Fairly Local Music Career

Half way through high school I decided I wanted to grow up to be a full-time musician and travel the world. The idea of getting played to play music and travel was exciting to me and became my dream job. A dream job for many that only the most persistent and patient musicians get to live out.

Believe me I was willing to put in the work. I have been drumming for a little over a decade, played in almost a dozen bands and also did some touring as a merch guy and photographer to see if that was a lifestyle that I would even enjoy. Right out of high school I put off going to college to move 3 ½ hours away to Canton, Ohio to join a band. Looking back I loved every minute of it and wouldn’t change a thing. I learned a lot about myself and who I wanted to become.

If I wasn’t playing drums in a band it was fun to just support hard working artists and help them stayed connected with their fans. I had my fun and fair share of gigs that I will never forget. Some of my favorite bands to be apart were Hemisphere and States Away. We played shows with bands that went on to do great things like twenty one pilots, Wolves at the Gate, the Orphan the Poet, Come Wind and many more.

It was great to become friends with the people I did while being in bands and going to shows. Many of those friends don’t live as close as they used to or we have just grown apart because life gets busy. I do know that we will always be friends and can normally pick up right where we left off.

So What’s Next?

I started a business at the beginning of the year called Hear&See. The focus of Hear&See is to provide design services and marketing materials for bands and brands that are within the music industry.

I won’t truly ever quit music. I promised myself that I would work in the music industry full-time one day and this is me deciding to work towards that. I may not be in a band but I can support my friends who do play as well as other musicians by designing graphic for them to connect on a deeper level with their fans and grow their audience.

I am currently overlapping my day job at ACCO Brands as I am building my business the rest of this year so I can create a solid foundation before making the jump as a full-time entrepreneur. I am building up my clientele and refining my process the remainder of the year.

Maybe someday I’ll buy another drum kit but for now I am content with having my sticks and practice pad to play on at home and air drumming in the car to my favorite songs.

If you enjoyed reading this and want to talk about music, building a business from the ground up or want to hire me to work on a project you can email, reach out to me on Twitter or Snapchat.

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News

Journalism Tips: Life Is About More Than Music

In just over a month I will turn 28, and at that point I will have officially been working towards my goal of being a career-long professional in the music industry for a little over a decade. I started by promoting and booking for a local venue, which lead to street team work for a variety of indie labels. From there, I left for college and pursued a degree in music business while also running the campus radio station and launching my own music blog. Upon graduating from college I continued to build my blog while seeking work and, after securing a job, moved from Michigan to Boston to continue pursuing my career. That job eventually fell apart, but I luckily secured the role at Haulix I hold today before that time came to pass. I don’t know if I will ever want to work at another company after the wonderful experience I have had here so far, but if there comes a time when that is what I must do then I will find the strength to move on. I have no choice. The music business is a hustle or die industry, and even a decade into my work I feel I must hustle just as hard as I have every day before today, if not harder, in order to continue having a place in this business to call home. It’s stressful, but it’s what I signed up for, and if you’re reading this now you probably agreed to the same.

When I was younger, making sacrifices in the name of music was a no-brainer. By the time I started booking and promoting concerts I had already consumed numerous books and essays about life in the music business. I had also watched Almost Famous about a hundred times, which at the time I believed would one day serve me well (it hasn’t). All this was done because I knew music was the place for me, and I wasn’t going to let the fact I grew up surrounded by cornfields and country roads prevent me from leaving my mark on entertainment. My parents were supportive, but also understandably cautious. They had lived far longer than me and knew all too well about the dark side of entertainment. They saw their heroes fall from grace, as well as good artists go unnoticed. They had read how music, like film or television, chews up talent and spits it out with no regard for the welfare of the human possessing said talent, and though they were happy to see me drive to succeed they were concerned I too would be used and discarded. While I don’t think that has happened to me yet, there have been times when it felt like it could. Whether it was the period when my full-time job in Boston lost funding and couldn’t afford to pay its staff, or the countless times a website I was associated with went offline for seemingly no real reason, my career has been littered with moments when it seemed like all hope was lost. Still, I dug in harder than ever before and kept working. I kept grinding in the face of no pay and no industry future because I believed – like I do still today – that hard work pays off.

Recently, and by that I mean this past weekend, something changed for me. After years of putting my career and the desire to leave a mark on the entertainment industry above everything else in life I finally broke while on an otherwise normal day-cation with my fiancé, Lisa, and my parents. The original plan was for my folks to visit us in Boston, but due to the death of a distant relative my parents had to make a last minute change and visit New Jersey instead. We were initially going to call off our plans altogether, but Lisa and I decided to make the 4.5 hour drive down because it had been several months since we were able to visit anyone in our extended families. You see, while we may live a happy life in Boston, it has come at the cost of being half a country away from our families in the midwest. This was another sacrifice made in the name of music, and though it has rarely weighed on me over the last half decade this day was different, and I think every day moving forward will be different as well as a result.

The tipping point came in a music store of all places, at a time when I wasn’t even thinking about my life or career. Lisa and my mother were ready to leave, so they asked me to find my father and tell him we were planning to head up the street. As I scanned the aisles, I couldn’t see the man I’d known my entire life. I walked up and down before catching someone that looked like him in the corner of the shop. As I approached, I caught myself stopping momentarily because the man I was seeing had an almost complete head of grey hair, or at leas the back of his head was almost completely grey. I was about to turn and walk away when the man turned and, as you can probably guess, revealed himself to be my father.

That was it. In that moment when I realized the man I thought to be ‘too old’ to be my father was actually my dad something inside my broke. My dad may have turned 50 earlier this year, but in all my years on this planet he has always had a full head of dark brown hair. We joked about his incoming grey hairs whenever they would appear, but it wasn’t until this moment in Jack’s Music Shoppe in downtown Red Bank, New Jersey that I realized my father was getting older. In that fleeting moment my brain finally grasped the concept of our fleeting existence, and I knew in my bones for perhaps the first time ever that a day would come when my dad was no longer among the living. I realized that his time, as well as mine, was growing shorter by the passing minute. We were dying, and we always had been, but for whatever reason my mind and soul chose this exact moment to come to terms with the fact the amount of time I have to spend with my father is slipping through my fingers at an alarming and completely unstoppable rate.

As this wave of immense emotion rolled over me I felt tears begin to form in the corners of my eyes, but I tucked them away before they could see the light of day. It wasn’t until Lisa and I were in bed back in Boston that I actually had to sit and take in everything that had crossed my mind in the preceding hours. When I did, at three in the morning, the sobs poured out of me like a child who just lost their favorite toy. Lisa sat with me, telling me that she felt some kind of inner turmoil weighing on me, and she held me until I could find the power to stop shaking. We talked about life, death, and the people we had lost along the way. We talked about the possibilities of eternity, and what it means to be conscious. We talked about a lot of things far too personal to detail here, but the one thing we never discussed was my career in music.

I’ve always known that I will one day cease to exist. That fact had dawned on me at an incredibly early age when, on the day of my birthday, my grandmother on my father’s side passed away. I recall crying in my father’s arms in the dead of night pleading with him to find a way to let me avoid death, and he was honest in saying that was impossible. He told me instead that death would not come for me for a very long time, and that the same was true for him. I believed him, and even though I still feel unsettled by the rush of feelings I had in Jersey over the weekend I still believe that to be true. With the exception of that one grandmother, most people on both sides of my family live long, fulfilling lives. I can only hope the same fate befalls my parents and I, but of course there is no way to know just what life holds in store.

And that is why I felt compelled to share this story. The grey hairs on the back of my father’s head taught me more about what is important in this life than anything I had seen, heard, or been taught throughout my existence. In that one brief moment I realized that I, nor anyone else, can be Peter Pan. I may have a career in an industry that thrives off making the feeling of youth last forever, but eventually everything I know will turn to ash, including the bones, muscles, and tissues that make me a person. Everyone I love will eventually pass from this existence, and try as I might to believe one philosophy or another I have no idea what comes after our brief time on this Earth. All I know is that when I saw the grey hairs on my father’s head I could not have cared less about my place in music history, or even music today. All I could think about were the sacrifices made to get to where I am, and what I realized is that most of the things I had to cut out of my life related to the people in it. Whether it was moving across the country for a job in a city where I don’t know a soul, or simply spending every waking hour blogging instead of enjoying the company of friends and family, I had lessened the time I have with the people I love the most for a selfish goal that would mean nothing when I died, and that thought has now kept me awake for days.

Music is a wonderful industry to be a part of, and it’s filled with brilliant people whose presence in your life is a gift you can never repay, but if success comes at the cost of losing time with those who already mean the world to you then I’m not sure that success in this business is something I still want. No job is worth losing the time we have with those we love the most, and starting this week I am taking a very hard look at how I can make changes that allow me to better focus on the things that really matter in this life. I hope this story will inspire you to do the same.

James Shotwell is the Marketing Coordinator for Haulix. He is also a professional entertainment critic, covering both film and music, as well as the co-founder of Antique Records. Feel free to tell him you love or hate the article above by connecting with him on Twitter. Bonus points if you introduce yourself by sharing your favorite Simpsons character.

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