I feel so lost, overwhelmed, and alone. What I thought I was working toward isn’t actually what I wanted. I don’t know how to enjoy this anymore and anything music related feels like such a chore.
I (27F) have been around music my whole life. My mom is a successful songwriter who had a hit decades ago, and I grew up with lots of encouragement and support in the arts from my family. I am very grateful for this.
I idolized my mom (still do, she’s a badass) and started singing and writing songs from a young age- a craft I genuinely enjoy, but I don’t think would’ve been my first choice to pursue if not for my musical family. Because my mom had success, some part of me just assumed early on that one day I would inevitably have a hit record too- if I keep singing and writing, then I’ll have a hit in my 20s, and that was my goal in life. I felt like I HAD to do it, like it was my destiny or something. The other part of that logic is that if I don’t have a hit/success by the time I get to my 30s, at that point I’m “past my prime”, a failure, and beyond the point of anything substantial happening in my music career. I put this pressure on myself.
I know that sounds absurd. But that’s what I genuinely believed my entire life. My partner recently talked some tough-love sense into me saying that no matter how good I am, “making it” is about as probable as winning the lottery, and I should just do music for fun. Which, yeah ideally that sounds great, but it’s so disheartening to create a song that you poured your heart into and then release it to 0 streams and the sounds of crickets.
Yet, I’m having trouble finding the motivation to perform and show people my music. I hate performing solo because I write huge, production-heavy bombastic songs, and I feel like a piano/vocal version doesn’t do my songs justice. I’d love to perform my songs with a band, but that’s not doable at this current time either. I had a band years ago who played with me for my EP release show and I had a great time, but it was a really labor intensive and expensive project that didn’t really result in anything. I also ended up getting in a huge fight with one of my bandmates over money and it made me almost entirely closed off to working with anyone again (fwiw- I’m not signed to a label and would love to pay players for their hard work per rehearsal, but the best I could do was get dinner and cover the rehearsal space fee, which added up quickly. They knew this was the deal going in though).
Anyway. After the band incident I didn’t write anything for 2 years until finally getting past my hang ups through therapy and making an album. I’m really proud of it, but now that I’m gearing up for its release, I feel completely paralyzed. Recently I’ve been thinking I don’t know why I’m even doing this- I don’t know what the end goal
Is anymore. My whole life I thought it was for fame or a hit, but I don’t want to “do what it takes” if that means putting in hours selling myself out doing promo I don’t enjoy doing, compromising my art in the hope that it MIGHT get a thousand listens if I’m lucky. Creating brings me joy, but the rest is sheer agony.
It’s gotten to the point where I don’t even want to practice my own songs anymore. I have so many things planned for an album release, but I can’t bring myself to do it. My life is great as it is without pursuing music, but I feel like I’ve sunk too much time into this and I would just let myself down if I just quit.
Any advice would be appreciated. This feeling has loomed over me like a storm cloud for the last 4 years of my life and I just want it to stop so I can enjoy this again. Thank you in advance.