I will talk about the honest thing first, I think that starting with something more polished will defeat the purpose of the whole exercise.
I’m very nervous about what is coming.
This nervousness is like a low hum which exists behind everything; a new song that has yet to be released, a website which hasn’t existed a month ago, a degree which eventually ends, and a profession in an industry where no one tells you what to do next.
What I have noticed is that the hum isn’t much about the future. It’s about the list.
As the list gets shorter, the noise becomes more quiet.
For a long time, it felt like one big thing called “my career,” and whenever I thought about it, I found myself feeling tired and instead did something else. But it made it worse.
Then I wrote things down. Tasks, rather than my feelings. The old songs saved in the wrong account, the email address I’ve been meaning to set up properly, and even the website that contains around six “coming soon’s” in various places, which is another way of saying “no one’s home.”
Every time I finished one of those things, the hum got quieter. Not gone.
That made me kind of surprised since I thought the anxiety would disappear completely after the big thing happened; the release, the numbers, as well as whatever proof I imagined. Turns out, it doesn’t really work like that. It only goes away in smaller pieces, every time you turn something complex and vague into something that’s finished.
Except, when the thing is a song.