Getting Out of The Gate

Creative Commons License:  The Hacker Way

I want to do things perfectly.  I want every song, every performance, every picture, every blog entry, every breath I take, to be awesome.  Unfortunately, I am human.  This gets in the way of my pursuit of perfection.  I get pimples, I forget things, sometimes, when I'm nervous, I strum the wrong chord.  I wish there was some sort of photoshop for life that could edit out all my blunders and imperfections.  Maybe if I lived via a holographic projection that would be possible, but until then...I must wrestle down my desire for perfection and make it a goal for myself to GET OUT OF THE GATE!

Last night I watched Taylor Swift's incredible performance at the 2012 Grammy Awards that proved without a doubt that she can sing.  Rewind to the 2010 Grammy Awards and her vocal performance in a duet with Stevie Nicks garnered a backlash of harsh criticism for being pitchy (especially from music industry critic Bob Lefsetz!).   Why has this redemption inspired me so much?  I think it's because I'm inspired to keep moving forward and not allow myself to be crippled by everything that is less than perfect.  This applies to my music, my performances...and my website!  This does not mean I will not continue tweaking and improving upon what I've done.  It only means that I will not allow a lack of perfection to stop me from moving forward.  If Taylor Swift can release Grammy worthy music without having nailed down her ability to sing on pitch under pressure, why can't I allow the same room for growth in my own journey as an artist?

www.lilyc.com

Diving into Chapter 3 of "Music Success in 9 Weeks," I had this grandiose vision, I will REDESIGN my website, it will be epic, it will sing, it will dance, there will be fireworks!  And then, life came knocking on my door.  Work deadlines, hosting gigs, and family commitments to name a few of the many distractions that took away from the vision of losing myself in Wordpress for a week.  And then I took a look at my existing website.  I already have google analytics set up, and I already have a player embedded to hear a sample of my music.  Why fix what isn't broken?

So, instead of investing 5 days of programming time I spent 5 hours tweaking.  I added a few snazzier looking social media icons, included my newest personal pitch and rejigged things, along with changing the homepage photo.

Am I completely satisfied?  Of course not.  But I accept that insatiable perfection monster that lives in my artist heart and will allow it to prompt me towards future growth in development.  In fact, I just registered for a class on HTML and CSS from the fantastic non-profit, Ladies Learning Code.  I will keep improving upon where I am at.  One day, my website may be able to brew a cup of coffee for my fans, but until then, I am happy to let myself GET OUT OF THE GATE!

The Challenge Begins...Moving Forward After Temporary Derailment

 This train captures how I felt towards the end of last year!
Photo by:  Cian Ginty

Life gets in the way...and it's okay if the curve balls you are thrown derail you from your desired path.  I do believe that with each unplanned tangent, there are always things we can learn and grow from, that will help us when we have time and space to return to the charted path.

This is what I must believe for this is where I find myself.  Many of my goals were taken off line when family situations and grief derailed me.  As a Type A, it's been difficult to find myself at the end of my rope...to be unable to muster energy to be productive.  That is how I felt in the last quarter of 2011.  Exhausted with no creative energy to envision something else.

And then...2012 began with a great catalyst.  One that I happen to have the chance to champion on behalf of my work at the Songwriters Association of Canada.  I helped to launch the Canadian Songwriters Social Media Challenge (otherwise known as The Blogging Challenge), whereby I will be following the advice doled out generously by Ariel Hyatt in her book, "Music Success in 9 Weeks," alongside 60 songwriting peers across Canada who are also looking for a breakthrough.

To be honest, I even had to push through resistance just to crack the book open.  How many times have I set goals and been disheartened when I failed to bring them to completion.  At the same time, how many times did I achieve progress and negate it by focusing on all that I hadn't done.  Luckily, the book met me exactly where I am at.  It reminded me to celebrate my successes, recognizing that goal-setting can be an ever changing process.  My goals are not etched in stone, but they can serve as a compass to direct my time and efforts until they change, at which point, my compass will also readjust.

So I have a slew of goals on hand, some technical, some business, some personal...all of them, well most of them quite achievable if I can focus on taking action steps regularly - 6 of them in fact everyday.  That's the magic number Ariel says is achievable for most people.  So here I go...

Week 1 of the challenge wasn't so hard.  It was an invitation to spend some time with my heart to define where I want to go in the days, weeks and months ahead.  I am happy to say, "I did it!"  I celebrate the success of this, my first blog entry in the challenge.