Last week, I ended my friendship with my ex. We’d fallen into a ‘situationship’ and I had developed strong feelings for him again. To my mind, we were dating for the second time, but had just dialled it back - but it became clear that he didn’t feel the same. He was just enjoying the sex without commitment.
So I went online, and met someone else. To keep things simple, I told my ex about the new bloke, and said we should probably stop chatting. He basically said he didn’t care, and didn’t even bother to read my last message to him.
Then the new bloke ghosted me.
To make matters worse, I released my album on Bandcamp, and though I made some money (thank you to everyone who bought it), the stats were really bad. People were listening to half of the first track, on average, and not continuing to listen. For nearly four years, the music has been my potential way out of the financial hole I keep falling into; at the end of last week, that felt like a total delusion.
Universal Credit had given me a tiny £138 the previous Monday; aside from that, I earned £418 in February.
It all culminated in my sobbing in my 12-year-old’s arms, something I’ve only done about three times in the entirety of her lifetime.
“Mum, I love you and you’re amazing,” she said, which made me cry harder.
The next day, I decided I had to sort myself out - for her sake, as well as mine. So here’s what I did.
Focus on the good stuff
My daughter gifted me a lovely journal she had bought. I asked her to write an encouraging message in the front, because I knew it would cheer me up. And even though my negative brain hissed, “She’s writing it under duress - she doesn’t mean it”, she wrote pretty much what she’d told me the night before when she was comforting me. She’s a very emotionally honest girl and I know that she loves me - and remembering that made me feel a lot better. Some people have no one to love them, let alone a wonderfully kind and compassionate daughter.
I don’t journal. One of my friends swears by it, but I already do so much confessional writing on here and on Patreon that I guess I get a lot of the negative feelings out of me without needing to journal. But the friend who swears by it also keeps a book full of nice things. And I realised that I needed to remember the good things in my life a lot more, and dwell on them instead of the negative stuff.
So: the best thing in my life by far is Lily. She’s awesome, and if she loves me, then I must be okay. Then I’m lucky enough to have lots of great friends: David, Caz, Grandad, Justin, Gary, all my patrons and Substack supporters… and also lots of less close friends who are really nice too.
I also have a lovely house. Yes, renovating it almost sent me into debt; yes, it’s in a very downmarket area. But it’s stunning, and how many people would love to live in a house like this? (I sound like Loyd Grossman now!)
Plus I’ve been very lucky in my career, in that I’ve been able to create for a living almost constantly, since I was 21. I mean, yes, it would be nicer to earn more than £418 a month from it, but I’m working on that - and the fact that I don’t isn’t due to me not having a strong work ethic, because I’m always working. It’s just hard to make any significant money from it, and nearly every creative freelancer finds this to be true. If it wasn’t difficult to make money, we’d all be billionaires.
And I might be fat, but as far as I know, I’m healthy. And weight can be fixed.
Really, when you consider all this, I’m one of the luckiest people in the world. I have the most incredible daughter and great friends, live in a gorgeous house in an amazing city, am healthy, and do what I love for work. If I just had more money, and maybe a romantic partner, things would be perfect. There’s certainly nothing to cry about.
Reframe the negatives
The thing I was most upset about last week was the music: that people aren’t listening to it past the first track. But I tried to reframe my assessment of this. Firstly, it’s very early days, so there’s not enough data to base my fears on. 221 unique listeners in total. That’s not even 250 people!
Secondly, my existing fanbase follows me for my writing and comedy, not my music. So while they might very generously want to support me financially and encourage my endeavours, the music might not be their thing at all. Not everybody is into sweetly melodic electropop. Some of my followers might not even like listening to music, full stop! The same way I don’t listen to podcasts.
It is massively kind of them to support me though, because they know I’m skint - but they might be doing it despite the music, not because. Who knows?
The main thing is I’m also getting feedback like the messages below. And some artists never get that, so I just have to be patient and play the long game. If the people below enjoy my music, there will be an audience for it - I just have to find them, and/or wait for them to find me.
In two days, I’ll start busking the album in Stratford. Who knows how this will go? I’ll let you know in my next Substack.
But there’s no point feeling sad when you don’t know that you have a reason to. The album’s not even out on streaming services yet.
Focus on the shit stuff
You’re like, “Where the hell are you going with this, Ari?!”
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