Twentysomething in the Music Biz

Balance is a concept I’ve struggled with my whole life. Whether it was trying to balance out school, athletics, and being a social adolescent growing up or more recently balancing out passion and monetary compensation.

For the past couple weeks, I have reached peak highs and lows as a result of exciting business opportunities taking form, but I desperately tried to stay realistic and focus on facts as opposed to assumptions. Assumptions are one way emotional trip to one or more of the following: ignorance, misunderstanding, disappointment, anger, hatred, impatience…basically, not pleasant things.  This can be applied to waiting on a record contract, colleges acceptance, getting a job, relationships, or even blood tests.

For example, I assumed, growing up, that I would fail at riding a bike from a lack of balance, so I never really tried. It took a push (literally and figuratively) from my gal Virginia to get me on a bike for the first time since sophomore year of college this past Sunday. After ten minutes of practice, I left on a four hour journey around most of Manhattan with a pit stop lunch in Central Park. Pretty damn amazing feeling. For 24 years, I was a cyclist who never road a bike.

After an overall horrible day today, I began to think about my trip on Sunday. Finding balance on a bike helped me realize what I was capable of and how to find the balance in other parts of my life as well (and these most certainly can be applied to up and coming bands as well):

• Compromise (definition–an agreement or a settlement of a dispute that is reached by each side making concessions) but don’t compromise (definition–the acceptance of standards that are lower than is desirable)
• It takes certain level of failure in order to succeed
• You have to understand before you assume
• Patience doesn’t allow you to capitalize on the moment, but intensity often leads to carelessness
• My balance isn’t your balance.
• The ebb and flow of life tends to balance out in the end.  Appreciate the good, but realize it isn’t gonna be good forever and, on the flip side, the same is true for the bad (note:  good and bad are relative terms to be self-defined)

So regardless if you’re in riding a bike, trying to salvage a horrible day, or starting a new band, balance is a tenet to live by.  And think about this: balance is different than stability.  I’d prefer balance, but I won’t tell you why just yet.