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Re: Music or bad habits ruining it for me.



With experience, I;ve learned that happiness comes from setting goals and having proper time management. 

there's really three categories of activities: 

1) things that must be done (eat, sleep, work, paint the basement, do the dishes...) 
2) things that relax me (reading, watching movies, spending time with wife and daughter...)
3)things that I want to do (all the art projects)

There's little choice about the things that must be done...  if you don't do these things, the consequences will mess up your life and prevent you from doing anything else.  In my case, there's also little choice about the second category...  I need my down time to organize my thoughts for the other stuff...  I make sure to do these things, before starting off on my own projects.

So that doesn't leave a whole lot of time for my artsy stuff...  this is why I plan my days to the minute to make sure I make the best of it...  also I look for synergies like watching a documentary on something related to a project, which is both relaxing and makes me think about my stuff.  Or taking programming courses that will prove of use both in music and in video/illustration...

 My problem is that everything interests me and I tend to go on very long tangents researching and experimenting.  To control this I wrote a mission statement for myself, just like they do in the corporate world.  Every time (or near enough) I go off to explore some tangents, or spend too much time on a given activity (reading), I like to ask myself how this contributes to my mission.  If it doesn't, I force myself to let it go...  there is only so much time.

Being able to manage your time to produce art and still remain a human being is hard work, but it's worth it...  

Sylvain