Sup Steem punks and Steem princesses!

12 years of playing music. Why stop now?

The grass isn't always greener.

I have been playing music for basically all of my teenage and adult life. I started in early middle school when my parents bought me an electric guitar with an amp. I made a ton of noise throughout the years from playing the Van's Warped Tour to getting hundreds of thousands of views on the internet. I had mastered the industry and was building my own empire within the music industry. I owned a few companies in Texas that would host shows and put bands on tour. I was generating $1500-7000 monthly while playing shows in front of hundreds of people. Things were going pretty damn well. I was making thousands of dollars and getting all the attention any musician could ever ask for.

One day I just stopped...

The concept began to drag on me. It started to tear me down. Speaking in terms of playing and performing music I began to get bored with training and it showed when I performed shows. The shows that I was putting on had taken a big financial hit and it made me depressed to have been burned so hard. The companies continued and I bowed out respectfully. It felt as though people were always tugging at my sleeve for something in this business. Over and over. Like a fly in your ear. Buzzing. I couldnt take much more of these people buzzing in my ear and it was just normal people. It was fucking dumbass naive people. There is nobody who thinks they have shit figured out more than a local musician. Working with these fools was annoying. Nobody was driven to create success for themselves and my business was dependent on them. I felt like I was managing toddlers. So within this time 2 things happen:

1.I grew tired of wanting to grow as a musician, with that you only need good marketing to become successful.
2.I grew tired of the attention that came with being an event coordinator and musician. The "Sleeve tugging" as I called it.
3.The work was not worth the reward anymore.

In short, music stopped giving back what I was putting in...

I quit everything. I stopped even listening to new music. I dipped out of the game entirely without a trace. I even stopped posting on social media. I went into some sort of depression that stemmed from not knowing what to do next. I had dedicated my life to music and I knew nothing else. This hiccup in life lasted about 6 months. In that 6 months I traveled and filmed my travels. My girlfriend and I had taken break. I needed time to figure out what was going on.....to figure out myself. Within that time I had reflected on some important things. I had to find what I love again. I tried all kinds of new things just out of desperation to kill this depression.

Falling into satisfaction.

Eventually I stumbled upon filmmaking. It gives me the satisfaction of creating things that I enjoy, while at the same time not putting me on the road and having to speak to thousands of people a week. I found happiness in other forms of entertainment. Through animation, through creating video games, through helping others achieve their goals.... I believe that if you have something going on in your life that is holding you back, you must cut the bad fruit from the tree. The depression you feel will pass if you just open your mind and try new things. Life gets better.