2014 Resolutions

Now that we are one week into 2014, I guess it’s time to make some resolutions.

And no, it’s not too late to make New Year resolutions. Hell, one year I was making Chinese New Year resolutions because I had put them off for so long. Making resolutions in the second week of 2014 is nothing.

Anyway, here are my three main resolutions for 2014.

1. Overcoming Self-Doubt

The biggest resolution I’m making this year is a little abstract, but it’s still really important. It’s occurred to me fairly recently that I have almost no confidence in myself or my abilities. I never think of myself as a good musician or writer, and when people tell me otherwise it always comes as a surprise. It’s gotten to the point where I don’t fear failure as much as see it as inevitable, and because of that I’m afraid to try anything really ambitious. It’s probably the reason why I’m toiling away at ghostwriting SEO articles for the Internet and why I don’t find many paying music gigs. It’s as if there’s a voice in my head telling me that I’m going to fail if I try anything, even in areas where I’ve been successful in the past. It’s almost crippling, which is why I’ve resolved to do my best to stop listening to that voice and learn to become more confident. I know that won’t be easy, and I may not be able to do it in one year, but I really want to learn to shut out the self-doubt that’s been plaguing me for years.

For the record, I don’t know where that self-doubt comes from. Most of the people in my life have been nothing but encouraging to me, and those who weren’t turned out to be condescending jerks more often than not. Still, that feeling of crippling self-doubt is there somehow, and unless I overcome that I don’t think I’m going to accomplish much in my life.

2. Write, Dammit!

My next resolution is to write in this blog more often. I’ve been doing plenty of writing, but most of it has been ghostwriting. If you read an ad or article online, there’s a small chance that I was the one who wrote it, but you’d never know because my name is probably not on it. With this blog, I wanted to have a place where I could post essays, articles, reviews and angry political rants that actually had my name on them. The only problem is that I don’t get paid to write in this blog. Sure, Google might throw some extra cash my way if enough people click on the ads on my blog, but so far that has amounted to pocket change. I’m broke more often than not, and that breeds a kind of paranoia that makes me afraid to write anything unless I’m getting paid for it. When I don’t get paid for what I write, I can’t help feeling that I’m wasting my time. Naturally, this has led to me going months without writing in this blog, something that will (hopefully) come to an end soon. I plan to write at least one post a week here. As always, I probably won’t exactly have a theme to these posts. I probably should, but it’s my blog, and part of the fun of not having an overall theme is being able to write whatever I want. That might not make much sense, but there you go.

3. Play Music, Get Paid...Somehow

My third resolution is to do my best to make a living as a musician. I’m obviously not going to count on becoming rich and famous with my viola, but having regular paid gigs is something I’d like to aspire to this year. Depending on the way the rest of my life goes, this could mean looking for church gigs in my spare time, or it could mean actually going out and auditioning for professional ensembles. I’m hoping for the latter, but we’ll see what happens.