“What gets you out of bed in the morning?” I asked my friend who had a corporate job.
She answered: “Uhm… I don’t know. Probably planning my vacation.”
I mulled on her reply then and I mull on it still. It brings up a couple of thoughts for me: 1) every day, I want to get out of bed excited about my work and 2) I never take vacations.
Being a career musician is essentially being a small business: if we don’t hustle, we don’t eat. No one hands us a corporate manual on company policy – we make the policy. Of course, the accepted norms of professionalism apply to be successful: being on time, being clean, producing an exceptional product that people want to buy. Perhaps original artists get to be a little slack on the above, but I would argue that even the most renegade, in-your-face, crude – but successful — indie artist has a diligent work ethic.
We are so insane to do music for a living to begin with –we better love it, even in the worst times, when it beats up on us, when the gig goes to someone else, when someone tells us we’re terrible – do you guys in corporate jobs take things as personally as we do? If you love something, you’re excited to do it every day – but it can also break your heart into more pieces. It’s certainly not about job security for us, because we never have it to begin with.
And paid vacations sound amazing. I have gone to Europe on tours for over 15 years, sung in Morocco, sung in Istanbul, toured the USA from coast to coast, – but I am always working when I go. I am not sure what I’d do with the time if I didn’t work. I don’t relax easily, which has its own drawbacks that could probably be cured by a great paid vacation.
I had a corporate job for a while, long ago. It was actually great – I worked for an ad agency that my Dad ran. I learned about media plans and ad rates and demographics. And then, when things went sideways with his business partner, my Dad laid me off.
No business is personal, in the end. It’s just about making a living and cutting your losses when you have to. The music business is not immune to this reality. But what it gives us back makes all the losses worth it.
What gets YOU out of bed and ready to face the day? Click the link below and let a chick singer know.
Love,
Gwen
