Mid Year Update . . .

Hey Everyone

I just wanted to give a bit of a mid year update. I have been feeling mostly like shit. Still raging, sometimes feeling, most of the time going around in a circle and sometimes feeling God (still rarely). Since experimenting with engaging my passions full time and not being able to generate any sustainable donations, it is bringing up a lot of emotions from rage, fear, terror, hopelessness, overwhelm, but sometimes grief. Getting to the true grief is tough, sometimes I have no idea of what I’m doing or what I’m supposed to be feeling and often find myself sitting and staring into space. So I just concede that I must be rageful and not wanting to feel.

I question at times if I have made the right decision to do my passions full time by donations without any supplemental income. Have I thrown myself too much in the deep end and am I being unkind to myself? Maybe I’m not as sincere as I feel I am? If anyone has any feedback or insight to this I am all ears! I would welcome any guidance right now.

I don’t know what’s worse, doing a 9-5 job that is not in line with my passions just to eat, drink and be sheltered or doing my passions by donations and being at risk of not being able to eat, drink or be sheltered. We’ve had an eviction notice, we had to sell some gear to get up to date with our rent and every day is to me is a life or death situation and fucking scary. I’m having a lot of dreams about dying and then find myself in bouts of depression not wanting to live. It’s weird being in a terror about dying and then also at the same time hating life and not wanting to be here.

My friend said the bouts of dark depression could be linked to spirit influence particularly from colonial spirits who still attack and pull down Aboriginal people, so I’ve been working through some more first nations intergenerational rage and trauma.

I’ve also found myself scrolling and looking for work and I’ll be honest if I find a job in line with my qualification and passions of music production I’ll probably take it. I’m not gonna lie, it’s brutal out here.

But honestly I want to be as humble as I can to work through this and I’d prefer to work towards doing my passions by donation but I just don’t know how long it will take to get there.

On a positive note, there is a lot more attempting to engage a relationship with God and feel emotions than previous years. I’ve also been addressing some of my addiction to sleep. Ever since I can remember I have never been a morning person even when I was a child. I loved going to bed late and waking up late. So I have been working on that, I have been consistently waking up at around 7:30am for the last couple of months. My goal was 6am which I did do a couple of times, but it is winter here now and still dark at that time, so my soul has been like ‘oh hell no’, the warm bed is much nicer thanks.

But getting up at this time enables me to have more time to work on my emotions, and spend some time with God.

I’m no longer doing workshops at the girls refuge, that work dried up, so I created my own music production workshops by donation called Backpack Beats and I have been delivering 1 hour workshops at a Oasis Youth Support (Salvation Army) in Surry Hills. Originally I was going to do four weeks but they have extended it to 6 weeks so I will be there for another 3 weeks.

To organise this I reached out to a few different youth support organisations and the Salvo’s were the only one to respond. Unfortunately the donations I receive from this is no where near sustainable so I’d like to do more of this but it depends on how I can attract the interest.

I don’t necessarily feel comfortable approaching people so I am hoping that I can attract interest through soul changes and word of mouth, rather than cold approaches, but again this could take a while.

But working in this area is definitely challenging myself to put myself out there, be more open with others with my heart. It teaches me to be flexible and adjust my approach as needed because every week is different. I’m not sure if I like it lol.

Usually what I want to share or teach is not what the young person needs or wants. It is very different to teaching in a classroom environment like TAFE because there is no structure or plan. This helps me with my addiction for control and perfectionism and to go with the flow of desires.

I think though if I had my own space, I would definitely have more structure to what I wanted to teach but as I am a guest in someone else’s space I adjust to what they desire or want.

Other than that, 7 out of 9 different music opportunities I have applied for this year have been rejected. So that is bringing up a lot of emotions. Recently I discovered a big BIG emotion. Well I feel its a very important one for me to feel but I’ll share in another post.

The two positives, I was fortunate enough to receive funding for the second music video through CreateNSW. This meant I could pay my animators. Unfortunately the funding covered their fees only and both Nicki and I contributed our work as ‘in-kind’. Which means we donated our time, skills and effort for this next release without payment.

Nevertheless, the next song and music video is coming out this month which I’m excited about.

The other opportunity I applied for and got accepted was to attend a writers camp in my hometown Perth early July for women music producers. This is all expenses paid and I get to spend a few days over there working and improving on my craft. I’m looking forward visiting my old city, it’s been 10 years since I moved to Sydney. Time flies!

I also applied for a Spotify scholarship to get some extra training in music production at Ableton Live School which I didn’t get but the school decided to offer and fund me a place, so I will start that in July and finish in Nov. I’m excited to get some extra training in mix and mastering music and to learn directly from Ableton Certified Trainers. There is always more to learn and improve on when it comes to music.

All of this is great but the goal is to somehow get to QLD, we need to buy a car, pay for removals and set up a rental over there. Ideally I’d love to be generating donations before the move and be fully immersed in my passions and having my passions generate donations so that when we get there, we can continue to do our passions and live off donations without worrying about work. So that is what I am working towards.

But other than that emotionally it’s been a rollercoaster, and sometimes a head fuck of being completely stuck. I am at a loss at times on what to do , what to feel or if I am even on the right path. Sometimes full of faith. Again I’ll chat more about emotions in the next post.

Hope everyone is well.

Thay X