Dreams

“Music is all I wanted to do. There was no plan B.”   -Miguel

“Don’t ever let anyone tell you you can’t do it.”      -Carly Pearce

Those are two quotes I heard while watching artist profile fillers during a live stream of the recent iHeart Radio Music Festival Daytime Stage. Miguel and Carly Pearce are two up and coming music artists who each have a strong desire to express themselves through their music in  unique ways that music executives didn’t initially see. Both artists refused to give up and each took risks and never gave up. Now they are rising stars in their respective genres and are living their dreams.

What can we boomers learn from that? 

I am so lucky that I have spent most of my adult life making a living doing what I love. I say ‘lucky’ but actually my radio dream started before high school. Looking back I realize I started taking steps in this direction that far back. I paid attention to DJ styles, learned about music, listened to radio stations from all across the country. AM radio stations ruled in the 1960s and you could hear distant AM stations at night. I had the balls to visit radio stations and ask for a tour. Sometimes I actually got a tour. I found a way to make some friends with DJs. I was too geeky to be a threat.

But I also kept finding excuses to not start. Fear maybe?  I was shy so why did I think I could do something so public as being on the radio?  Advice from inside and outside of the media was negative.

Don’t do it. There’s too much competition. The business is cut throat. Jobs aren’t secure.

They were entirely correct but I eventually went for it anyway. I did have a backup plan but it wasn’t much of one. I was told by bosses at two of the nine radio jobs I’ve had that maybe I wasn’t cut out for this or maybe I should go back to smaller markets or lesser jobs. I daringly ignored their advice. I did bail out of my career twice, due mostly to temporary loss of confidence after losing jobs. Each time was for less than a year.

Some voice deep inside me said what Carly Pearce said ... “Don’t ever let anyone tell you you can’t do it.”  I don’t know where that came from but I do know that I convinced myself that I could live some version of my dream and I was determined to keep trying. Failure isn’t really failing if you use it as a teacher.

I’m not sharing my story to brag. I am at an interesting crossroads in my career and life. A lot of boomers are retiring and starting to do “what they always wanted to do”.  I have spent most of my adult life doing what I’ve always wanted to do and I am at the top of my game. But I work my ass off doing a job that used to be done by three separate full time employees and I want to cut back. I want to have more “me time” to do things that have nothing to do with work; things that aren’t critiqued by layers of bosses but that could still generate some income for me.

So I’m writing this more to remind me that it is possible to visualize a future, to invent a future that doesn’t fit anyone else’s expectations or boundaries, and then to figure out a path to get there.

Another advice thing I saw recently was if you want to start doing something, just start. You don’t have to wait till everything is in perfect alignment. Just start. The specific topic of this advice piece was podcasting. Some people who want to get into podcasting say they have to wait till they have exactly the right space, equipment, software, etc. This guy said just start. Don’t wait. Start. You’ll fail a few times but you’ll learn.

Funny thing is that I’ve identified podcasting as a possible next chapter for me. Fairly easy, I already have some if the skills and equipment. It might eventually generate some income.

What am I waiting for?