Five Times

I recently wrote with a guy who had written a song that was recorded by one of the most successful female country artists of our time. We met at his place where he had a room dedicated to writing and recording. In addition to some family photos, I noticed a plaque hanging on one wall, congratulating him on the sales of over 5,000,000 records. Our conversation went something like this:

Me: “What an accomplishment!”
Him: “Yeah, my wife encouraged me to put it up, but I think it needs to come down.”
Me: “But why wouldn’t you want to display that?”
Him: “Because it just reminds me that I haven’t done it since.”

You see, he had written that song about five years before the day we got together to write. It made me sad that he must come into that room five days a week to create, but immediately feel the pressure not to fail again.

Photo by rafaelmarquez. Used with permission.

I realized that it is my human tendency to always be looking forward to the next thing. I naturally am always focused on reaching the next mountain peak. But I believe the key to enjoying a career as a songwriter is to write songs because you enjoy writing songs, and for no other reason. Everything else is icing on the cake, including a big hit or a #1 song.

When I think about looking back at the end of my career, do I want to remember being happy five times (when I made it to the mountain peaks)? Or do I want to remember being happy five times a week?


Keep writing,

Ben