Okay, so I'm not giving up completely. I guess I didn't do a very good job of being clever as a writer with my last post (or maybe it was way longer than the limits of attention span).

Either way, allow me to clarify:

That post was really about a realization that more than a way to make a living (or to attempt to make a living), music is a very essential part of my life. It helps me have some semblance of balance as a human. In short, if I don't make music, everything gets out of whack. I need to make music.

Now since writing and recording (and occasionally performing) songs is something that keeps me sane, I have decided to give my time to it in the most healthy way I can. And for me this means I'm not shooting for a career at it, nor am I looking to make any real money from it. Somehow this feels great - I get to do what I love without the parts that really dragged me down.

It also frees me up to see if there are ways in which the art I make (notice I said "art" and not "music") can do something. You know, raising money and awareness for people and organizations that are doing what Jesus did - healing the sick, caring for the marginalized folks around us, and generally looking to do for others instead of ourselves. Things that resonate closely to my own heart.

More on all this as things come to pass. Of course, they may not come to pass. I guess you'll have to wait and see. Or not - that's what freedom is kind of about. Just know that though my musical output as been pretty nonexistent for a while, I have been writing and demoing new stuff since February of last year. It's been slow, and it's kind of different, but I'm the most excited about my own music now than I've been since Alive in the Fall.

I hope you'll stick around to see what comes of it, but hey, if not, thanks for stopping by.

On a music career. You know, the one I never really had or wanted.

Giving up isn't bad at all, really, if what we're giving up are the things that keep us from being truly alive. Seth Godin wrote a book a while back called The Dip which at its core was about knowing when to quit doing the things that don't work to do the sometimes radical changes that will help you to get out of "the dip." Now, he's writing mostly about business and marketing, but I think the sentiment is applicable in a broader sense, too.

For me, this translates (naturally) into music. [Just as an aside, I tend to take EVERYTHING to two places to make some sense of them: 1.) To sports. Nearly everything under the sun can be illustrated to some degree by a good sports analogy and 2.) To the world of music and the music business. So now you know.] More to the point here, I spent a few years trying to do music the way you were "supposed" to, though I suppose my motivations were not so much in building a career for myself as a musician but rather an organization (a platform) with which I could help other musicians make careers for themselves. 

But before I could help anyone, I felt that I needed to see if I could actually do it myself, and so I did the things musicians are supposed to do. You know, trying to build a fanbase, touring all over the place, having a cool haircut, etc. And while I had a blast making albums (even the low-fi "Flavor" ones I did at home), I never felt like the things I was doing really fit, nor was my haircut awesome enough. My efforts always seemed more like a means to an end (the "end" being a vault of experience that I could use to help other folks who did have awesome music and haircuts), but ultimately I was never successful at that part because it wasn't really something for which I felt a true passion. I was trying to shoehorn my foot into an ill-fitting shoe, and in the end, all I got out of it was a funny walk.

So here, months after I gave on trying to learn to walk in the wrong shoes, I am free to pursue and create music (and other things) with my heart. No more trying to build a fanbase. No more playing anywhere and everywhere just because I felt I had to have something to do (and to promote). No more personal branding. No more music business. No more "bigger and bigger" but more "smaller and smaller." Ah... it feels good.

Now, a couple of things I need to say here at the end. One, I'm not trying to discourage you or anyone from pursuing a career in music if that's what you want to do. Seriously. Go do it. Now. And two, if you choose, you could probably look at my "career" and surmise that I'm writing this blog post in this way because I wasn't talented enough to "make it" anyway. Well, you may be right. 

But I also know now at the age of 31 that during the ten years that I tried to "do the music thing," I never once felt like I was doing something natural as a touring performing artist. Writing songs? Yes. Recording? Definitely. Building relationships through music? More please. But trying to "make it?" Nope. I mean, I ran a nonprofit for crying out loud.

So your road may lead you to being the world's next big rock band. I will cheer you on, knowing that I was not made to do what you do. Also, please remember to thank your mom when you win your first Grammy. But I'm excited now that my own road is in a direction of dropping the baggage of what I'm "supposed" to do to make the music I've always wanted to make, to play with the ideas I've always had of how to set it free into the world, and to hopefully build deeper bonds of friendship and brotherhood with the community of other artists I am blessed to have in my life. The art - the music - gets to exist on its own without me having to constantly pimp it out to anyone within earshot or feeling the pressure of making it support me financially. 

I read this this morning from Oswald Chambers' My Utmost For His Highest:

"Paul [the apostle, not the Beatle - j.] is like a musician who does not need the approval of the audience if he can catch the look of approval from his Master."

I would say if I can do that, I will have been successful at my music. So here's to giving up on the things that never fit and giving my art (and myself) over to something better.

More to come. 

I think.

Habakkuk 3:17-18:

"Though the fig tree does not bud

and there are no grapes on the vines,

though the olive crop fails

and the fields produces no food,

though there are no sheep in the pen

and no cattle in the stalls

yet I will rejoice in the Lord,

I will be joyful in God my Savior."

This is the target I'm trying to hit.

This is some of my most recent design work (you know, as in one of my handful of part-time jobs) for Sam Heilig's debut EP, Between Here & Home (produced and recorded by my good friend Paul Reeves). I'm really happy with how it turned out, and as always, my goal is to try and make something that looks like the music sounds. 

So if you're wondering what Sam's music looks like, here it is. Of course, if you'd rather just know what it sounds like, he's putting up a track a week building up to his official release show here in Athens on Wednesday, Feb. 24th at Tasty World (with John French and Emily Hearn also joining the bill). I tell you all that in case you see the album cover and want to know what it sounds like, leading you to surf on over to his music page, which in turn leads you to think, "Boy, I sure wish I could see Sam play these songs live."

I'm just here to help.

I appreciate Sam trusting me with his project - it was a blast!

Today I turned 31 years old. 

My birthdays growing up tended to feel like ordinary days, but that was because they were ordinary days generally. Unlike my friends with summer birthdays, my birthdays usually began with me standing out at the end of our driveway waiting for the bus to come pick my brother, sister, and I up for school. In my memory it was often raining, and it seems to me that the rain was generally colder on the second of February than the first or third. Then, upon arriving to school, I was inevitably greeted with jokes about seeing my shadow and stuff about groundhogs, a complex experience for me in that my birthday just happened to share the day we look to a specific variety of ground rodents to predict the weather, two things that to me seemed unrelated. But after Bill Murray made a movie about reliving the same day over and over again, and after calling that movie Groundhog Day, and after having a birthday on the actual Groundhog Day on which people said the exact same things to me over and over again made the two things seem very related.

But it wasn't so bad really. My parents always made my birthdays special, and except for the year I was sick and nearly threw up on my cake notwithstanding (the fact that I threw up right next to it didn't seem to deter anyone from eating it, by the way), I've always enjoyed kind of ordinary-but-special birthday celebrations. 

But from start to finish, today was an absolutely perfect birthday and not at all ordinary.

I awoke to find a smallish blue-eyed little girl patting me on the arm and frantically telling me "Happy Birthday," partly because she was excited and mostly because we were having breakfast in bed and she knew she couldn't eat a cinnamon roll until I was up. The whole family crowded in, and we gorged ourselves on the sweet, sweet sugary rolls until we dared not eat anymore, which is when that same smallish blue-eyed little girl felt the sugar kick in and proceeded to play tag with her mom and dad, which amounted to her running around the end of the bed from one side to the other, smacking each of us on our arms, and yelling, "Tag! You're it!" at the top of her lungs. Our baby boy watched it all, as he normally does, with a look equal parts horror, amusement, and confusion. 

After breakfast and showers, I was sent away from the house to do whatever I wanted to do for the day. Being for the moment in between graphic design projects and a day of the week I don't normally go to one of my other jobs, the world was my playground. And so I did what I tend to do on such rare occasions - I played guitar for a good long while. It was great fun spending the afternoon in our band's practice space, making racket and getting our makeshift studio ready to record an album this month. 

Right as I was finishing up the studio bit, my great friend Paul Reeves called, and we met up at Walker's to hang out for a bit before I was to return home at 6pm, under strict orders from my lovely wife. Upon arriving home, I opened the door to the aroma of beef stew and a well-dressed group of Harwells (including my five-month-old son in a Bart Scarborough-approved Polo onesie that someone gave him). I opened some sweet cards from special people and two wonderful gifts - copies of Iron & Wine's Shepherd's Dog and Nada Surf's Let Go on vinyl. Ummm... vinyl.

Then the doorbell rang, and for the next half hour or so, our tiny house filled up with nearly every one of my favorite friends here in Athens, some of whom came even though they felt a little under the weather. I was truly surprised and very much overwhelmed, kind of like Jimmy Stewart at the end of It's A Wonderful Life. Our house was very loud for a while as we ate cake and drank coffee and told ridiculous stories and tried to be funny, and it reaffirmed a thought I've been living with for a little while about how someone's presence is much better than their presents (though presents are nice, too).

I've made it through 31 years, but I don't really know how many I've got left. My mom is certainly trying to help me live longer (she got me a pedometer, some vitamins, and a bottle of fish oil pills for my birthday), but despite her best efforts, the length of my days is anyone's guess. We have some friends who have been dealing with the realness of our own mortality for years now as one has fought cancer twice and is in now in a place where the doctors are running out of options. They literally (and valiantly, I might add) are having to focus on the day while it is today for tomorrow can be something very hard to think about. Mike is an amazing man, and we are praying for a miracle.

So when I look around my tiny living room and see people who have shared their lives with me and helped to mold my own, I am unable to deal with the thankfulness I feel for each of them. I keep thinking this day matters to me. These people matter to me. I used to run a record label and do things that people might find interesting, but I do them no longer. And despite the "ordinariness" of the life I am forging in my thirties, I am fortunate to have people who want to show up unannounced and crowd my house and eat my birthday cake. They didn't have to be here, but they were here just the same.

I sure am looking forward to dropping the needle on these shiny new pieces of vinyl tomorrow at my office, but the best birthday gifts I got were the thoughtful calls, emails, texts, and tweets from people I don't get to see nearly enough, and visits from people I am thankful to see daily.

And the pedometer, Mom. Can't forget the pedometer. I took nearly 6000 steps yesterday...