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Re: Balancing creative ambitions with real life responsibili

Posted: Fri Jan 12, 2018 6:47 pm
by 0dd
Thanks man, I'll have a listen when I get home from work (hopefully). He is the one man I would resurrect and have talk with. I dug him out through Terence Mckenna, they completely changed my life but Watts was that, fuck, that's what I've been missing moment.

Re: Balancing creative ambitions with real life responsibili

Posted: Fri Jan 12, 2018 8:34 pm
by Hades
Dilinger wrote:Wow Hades, while reading this topic and deciding to write also, I was wondering how the fuck is that mile long comment cunt Hades not here already, he's like THE parent of Subsekt, and there you go, 4 fucking scriptures of a comment, always a pleasure to read them though.
Because though it's perhaps contrary to popular belief, I really don't check out all the topics here all the time.
(just noticed this topic yesterday, still haven't even read all the comments yet,
which makes me feel like a cunt when I already post my own words, but well, tomorrow is another day)
Subsekt is fun, but real life is there as well, and making music is still better than chatting away with other cunts.
Dilinger wrote:Only one question, since cunt is a contronym at Subsekt, do you like people who fuck off their kids or not?
If your question is : do I like people that get kids and then don't bother caring about them ? NO, hell fucking NO !!
I honestly think that you're better off as an artist by not having kids (Steve is totally right there),
but when you do have kids, it's your responsibility (and no one else's) to raise them properly and care for them.
There are very very few excuses for being a lousy parent, and raising kids in my opinion doesn't mean just being their big friend and spoil them rotten.
That's only gonna fuck them up so they become total cunts when they are adults.
Just 2 hours ago I sent my oldest up to bed without dinner. Breaks my heart, and it was the 1st time ever,
but she was just playing that "whatever they ask me, I'll do it for 2 minutes and then oooops, forget about it,
and they'll do it instead, and I'll just smile and daddy will forgive it all" for far too long...
Fuck that shit. If she thinks that'll work with me forever, she got the wrong dad.

But anyway, I may make the sickest jokes (nothing like parenthood to fuck up someone's life from day 1, woohoo !!)
but I take raising kids very seriously, though with a healthy sense of humor.
(my kids are not a unique snowflake either)
Dilinger wrote:Only one question, since cunt is a contronym at Subsekt, do you like people who fuck off their kids or not?
Ps. I hope I can use the word cunt so freely since i'm a new cunt in this cuntland. Cunt!
of course you can fuckflaps !

Re: Balancing creative ambitions with real life responsibili

Posted: Fri Jan 12, 2018 8:54 pm
by Lost to the Void
Ah fuck flaps, one of my fave terms.

Re: Balancing creative ambitions with real life responsibili

Posted: Fri Jan 12, 2018 10:30 pm
by 0dd
That wasn't a real question, I was just passing the cUntronym joke. I agree absolutely with you and Jordan and Void. I don't want to run from responsibilities, and I love my kid I just fucking miss music (making) so much. I do see myself forcing it sometimes, I'll be a good cunt and control myself. Really should go back to meditation/tai chi. Dat shit's da bomb yall

Re: Balancing creative ambitions with real life responsibili

Posted: Sat Jan 13, 2018 1:38 am
by The_G
Hades wrote:
I honestly think that you're better off as an artist by not having kids (Steve is totally right there),
I'm a lot more productive since having kids. Before then I used to make loops and then get paralyzed. Had all the time in the world and couldn't do anything with it. After my older daughter was born, I became a lot more focused with the time I had, started learning shit properly rather than looking for shortcuts, and started maximizing my time.

I'm sure plenty of people have the opposite story, where they had to hang it up after having kids, because they couldn't put the time in or manage the effort they could before becoming a parent. I'm just saying that people are weird and often react differently to the same stimuli.

Re: Balancing creative ambitions with real life responsibili

Posted: Sat Jan 13, 2018 1:45 am
by Lost to the Void
msl wrote:
jordanneke wrote:Whilst that happens I just get fatter and balder.

hahahaha this. luckily my mix downs are get fatter too.


Its an age old thing this work/life balance. Unless your rich or win the lotto most of us have to work to survive. When your young you have all the time in the world (and boy did I waste lots of it!) as you get older time gets less and less, passes quicker almost.

The last two years 2015-17 where the hardest of my life, I lost both my parents in quick succession within 14 months to aggressive cancers, I became unemployed for the first time in 15 years, went on the dole for the first time in my life, and to top it all off got diagnosed with a serious life threatening (somewhat manageable) disease.


So.... My take away from all these challenges? Was to adapt and change, accept it and grow. I was in a comfort zone work wise the last years, and never looked after my health. That has all changed, I take meds daily, I stopped smoking after 28 years, I exercise and managed to find a decent job in a good company last summer. I was ready to pack it in at the end of 2016, before I got the job. I was thinking fuck this lets just go to SE Asia till the money runs out and top myself before the illness can do it. Comfort zones are death basically. We don't learn by having a good time, its the hard bits that contain life's lessons.

Music wise I was too freaked and stressed out all of 2015 and 16 to finish anything or focus. I had records coming out during this time but I had completed them prior. Getting the job was the turning point, so with the economic worries sorted I could relax enough to get back to it. I've set up a personal company to run my music business though, and press some vinyl thats my plan for 2018, have a few tracks coming out in the next months on some compilations and an ep. My issue now is TIME and the lack there of. I have fuck all time. My next move is to go to HR after next summer and tell them I really have to work 4 days a week. That will help. Its almost impossible to produce and keep a full time job.

As they say, what doesn't kill you and all that.
Jaysus.

Well here's hoping 2018 is a good year for ya.

Re: Balancing creative ambitions with real life responsibili

Posted: Sat Jan 13, 2018 7:28 am
by [wesellboxes]
Dilinger wrote:Fresh parent here in need of same help! I've got a 9 month old son and I'm just wondering, did you parents of Subsekt have any music time at this period, and how the fuck did you manage it?
Schedules, routine and stick to it religiously. My missus took most of the Gina Ford ones and adapted it slightly. From 3-4 months in my daughter sleeps at 10 am for 30 mins then 1pm - 3pm and then goes down at 7pm and sleeps through to 8am. She's 2 now and we still keep her on this.

Works like a charm but you need to be rigid and stick to it every day, which means family activities either need to be in the morning and back for the afternoon sleep or after.

Re: Balancing creative ambitions with real life responsibili

Posted: Sat Jan 13, 2018 10:36 am
by Hades
Lost to the Void wrote:Kept real life responsibilities to a minimum basically.
That involved having no kids as a main key, and finding jobs that could work around my musical needs.
So for years I was doing weird off hours shit that would fit around my musical life
.
^^This !
I only restarted making music when I was already working in Germany and having lots of free time, but I have always been a big reader, filmfan, loved doing sports,...
basically, I always liked having a lot of free time. So somehow, I always managed to get jobs that maybe weren't career builders but gave me lots of free time.
I couldn't give a fuck about my "career" tbh, and I even cringe when I hear people say how it's good to be "ambitious", to me it usually means they're a bunch of assholes that want money, fame, power,... and are willing to go over dead bodies to achieve what they want.
I'd rather say I am driven or have focus. Doesn't sound like I'm some selfious über-ego cunt.

Whenever I read the biographies of writers I like, I read exactly the same stories : they did graveyard shifts, or custodian jobs or whatever. "Shadow jobs" I call them, jobs that don't take up too much of your energy and still leave you enough free time so that when you come home from work, you still have enough energy (and mindset) left for what it is you really want to do in life.
Lost to the Void wrote: I don`t make money out of producing, I soon saw the trap that involves, and monetised my skills and experience ina different way (mastering).
This leaves me with the freedom to produce at the pace I want, to spend as much time experimenting or deviating (because who the fuck wants to only make techno all the time?) as I want with no pressure. For me it`s pretty much ideal, I can start side projects/new projects and have fun with them without thinking "How will I pay the rent with this?"

Essentially, if you want to do it, you have to make sacrifices, and if you are unwilling to make sacrifices, accept the limitations placed on you by your responsibilities and commitments and be happy in that.
I totally agree on this.
It has never crossed my mind to make money out of this. If I would some day, fine, but fuck me, I do NOT envy a lifestyle which means flying to god knows where almost every weekend to play some DJ set to a lot of hedonistic folks that care more about image than anything else, only to get home in the week, fighting a jet-lag and trying to catch up with some quality sleep, trying to not get too estranged from your kids and mrs, preparing your next set, keeping up with your image on the social network shit pages, looking depressed enough for the next black 'n white publicity shots, making sure you don't turn into a full-time alcoholic and/or junkie, and maybe, if you're lucky enough, trying to find enough time to actually still make some of your own music once in a while.
If your music doesn't have to pay the bills, you don't have to bend over to anyone, you don't have to follow any kind of musical fashion,
you don't have to care about your "image",
you can just make music, you can go and create whatever it is you want to create.
You are nobody's slave.

There was a time when techno (and even electronic music in general) was just a lot more niche, and people were used to not making real money out of it.
Nowadays techno has become big business, and so many people are only in it for the wrong reasons.

Re: Balancing creative ambitions with real life responsibili

Posted: Sat Jan 13, 2018 10:41 am
by Hades
juodas wrote:Hmm, everyone went through life responsibilities black hole I think, others may not, becouse of families or other stuff, I quit my social care job, and went to work as waiter, i had to travel each morning to restaurant, waking up at 6 a clock, living at 7:00, trains was been delayed most of the times, stress of being late. I had like 4h break each day, so i went back by train as well at 12 a clock to my house till 4 a clock, there was around 2-3 miles walk from the stations all together to my house(same stories with a trains as well bein delayed) weekly pay which is shite. In a mean time I had Ielts test i was really keen into this, was on speed at the same time, paranoia, didn't turn up to work place and at the end I didn't reach a right score for my course. left job, been through a lot of shit for 2 months, didn't have job, had 1k pound debt. So md and different shit was my friends, lonely times..... However i decided to come back to my old job, which was Social care, did 200-270 hours of work each month, in summer to repay my debt, I used to have around 3-5 off day in 3 months period, most of the times it 14.5 shift, at the end of summer thanks god, i gave all the money back to a friends and my landlord. Although I booked Another test on August as well, thanks to my co-worker which help me out and preparing for IELTS test. I pass a right score and i applied in music production course. which i'm studying it now. Anyway at course time, speed was still my friend, i had that stupid idea, that musicians need to be on something to make something(that's is a biggest bullshit) it helps me focus and bla bla bla bla stuff. So i reduced my work hours, to focus on my music. I would like to see who would stand 4 day in a job and 3 days at college, that was to cruel. Anyway back to the story I was focusing more at the music, yeah the tracks was better, than half of year ago, but something was still missing, there's was just sound, i didn't feel anything any emotions just kick, and stab and loop without a texture. So month past, and i went through gambling stage, it was my last proper payment to me, one and a half grand or something like, that i manage to pay bill and i had around 700 quid, went on slots and won 750, unfortunetly they didn't let me transfer the money, and they bloked my account, i spent one day to unblock it, however they didn't let me to transfer it, so i start to play it and at the end i end up with a fucking 150 for whole month in a beginning of november, Shit isn't travel expensive and stuff. More over I have a house mate which was a boxer and quite pissed of my speed addiction, so he gave me a pressure, so i had to throw my all stuff to my toilet and bla bla, i felt something different, like spiritual awakening or something like that, it was like in that movie ,,Fight club'' dude was starting everything from the bottom, he just blow up his own flat and he was obsessed by materialism same as me. So i started to do some boxing and running, which was the best best best thing what can ever happen to a person, You release realise that if you want to produce something, you need to do something different. Ideas just flow and flow and flow into your head. so went to college at first week with my new track, but it was still shit to me, but quite groovy it was one day project, and all of are group suppose to bring one track which they have been made in a day. anyway i just manage to come at first week to the college, so i had to survive, buying food and bla bla bla, i had 4-5 day off for 3 weeks, so had plenty of time for producing and finding the style i really wanted. So after that i came back at the end of november with a three tracks, (I shared one of them in here in other forum section, but i deleted anyway so maybe i will show you some later on when it' will be finished) and everyone in there was spaced out, that was the biggest turbo boost I really wanted that to be happen. So i'm at half term now, and just yesterday was my last day in the job, and i took 2 week holiday to focusing on the music. So in conclusion what I want to say first that I dont' give a shit about anyone and other people opinions, like everyone suppose to do that, more over if you want to produce something and make money from it, you still need an income from another job even if you will start to make money from music, you won't survive until you reach that stage (oooh some one is recognize you and seeing potential in you, dude who make drug addicts to dance) any way you need to work hard, hard to towards your goal and yourself in general find a women LOL. grind, learn something different, have a breaks from music as well if you will do the same thing over and over again you will become crazy duuudeee. Or you will arogant douche bag that thinks he can make music and tells a ''cool jokes'' to look cool around other people. Anyway i'm still working on, i never got paid for my music, and my music never been accepted to any of labels(I wish...) but when you will, reach that stage when you will have income from making money from your own stuff, then you can think about leaving your job and bein a full time music producer/dj. anyway you still making a risk and you know that becouse this industry is so so so so so huge and you know that.
P.s
Thanks bot for typing me this post :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :ugeek: :ugeek: :ugeek:
Reading this post makes me think you are still on something when you write like that. :lol:
But of course, those without sin... and all that. :)

Re: Balancing creative ambitions with real life responsibili

Posted: Sat Jan 13, 2018 10:50 am
by Hades
Lost to the Void wrote:
Dilinger wrote:
@Void: fuck, man you really did a lot of shit rave related :) I really like your zen approach, I feel that you know about Alan Watts, some of the stuff you write really resonates with his words.
I love Allan Watts, (My first vinyl release has a talk by Alan Watts on giving yourself up to the void running all the way through it) I meditate regularly, and I studied Zen and Dzogchen bhuddism for years.
So yeah. I follow my own sort of post-zen philosophy now, a sort of syncretic thing melding western and Eastern occult.
Zenarchy.
Any Alan Watts books you guys can recommend to start with ?

About 15 years ago I read this wonderful little book from a guy that spent most of his life reading all the big philosophers (Theo Kars),
and then wrote a book ("Practical Mind") full of tips to make your life "easier", so to say.
Learned a lot of things from that. Just stuff that seemed small at the time, but that do help you a lot in the end.
Different perspectives, different ways of thinking,...

Re: Balancing creative ambitions with real life responsibili

Posted: Sat Jan 13, 2018 11:54 am
by 0dd
I've never actually read any of his books since shippment to my country started a few years ago, although still really weak (fucking 3rd world) and "ocult" stuff is hard to find here, but I think I listened to all posible audio and video I could find on the net. Works better for me anyways than reading. I just found the book "way of zen" in my country and my language so I'm waiting for it to come in the mail. Really, you can't go wrong with anything you pick from him.

Re: Balancing creative ambitions with real life responsibili

Posted: Sat Jan 13, 2018 5:28 pm
by Hades
which country are you in ?

Re: Balancing creative ambitions with real life responsibili

Posted: Sat Jan 13, 2018 5:33 pm
by 0dd
Serbia

Re: Balancing creative ambitions with real life responsibili

Posted: Sat Jan 13, 2018 7:20 pm
by LocalStrongman
I'm a 38 year old guy that's always dreamt of writing techno, the music I love, but a demanding career (which I kind of got swept up in) always got in the way. I've tinkered with ableton on and off for a very long time and at times been encouraged by what I've come up with, but i've never found enough time or energy to finish a project. Last year, all this "going nowhere" really dawned on me and I found it quite depressing, so I committed to doing something about it..

...so I quit my job with a view to spending a few months actually getting something finished! I'll probably have run out of cash and will be living on baked beans by the time I get something done, but it's now or never and I don't want to get any older without exploring this fully.

I don't have any kids and girlfriend is quite understanding, so I don't have any excuses really!

Re: Balancing creative ambitions with real life responsibili

Posted: Sat Jan 13, 2018 7:38 pm
by [wesellboxes]
Hades wrote:Whenever I read the biographies of writers I like, I read exactly the same stories : they did graveyard shifts, or custodian jobs or whatever. "Shadow jobs" I call them, jobs that don't take up too much of your energy and still leave you enough free time so that when you come home from work, you still have enough energy (and mindset) left for what it is you really want to do in life.
A lot of this is romanticised, struggling artist bullshit though. And before you castigate me for that statement, I've spend years in bedsits and put many hours in at that particular coal face.

The reality is a corporate, mid to senior level job is no more difficult, time consuming or draining than any other job. In fact, it's relatively easy - reports, scheduling, meetings and making sure everything is ticking along. You don't need to be cunt to succeed and you certainly don't need to be one to do the job. You'll run into a few cunts but then there's been dickheads in every job I had since leaving school.

The only different is it pays better and allows you the freedom to both create music and live a pleasurable lifestyle related to music. New bit of kit, great lets buy it. Weekend away at Sonar or ADE, lets book it.

Fuck it, if you're going to be in a building that you don't want to be in for 40 hours a week, the best thing you can do is work out how to make it pay the best you possible can. My only regret is that it took me to reach 40 years of age to realise this and the life opportunities I squandered during the ten years previously.

Re: Balancing creative ambitions with real life responsibili

Posted: Sat Jan 13, 2018 7:51 pm
by Hades
[wesellboxes] wrote:
Hades wrote:Whenever I read the biographies of writers I like, I read exactly the same stories : they did graveyard shifts, or custodian jobs or whatever. "Shadow jobs" I call them, jobs that don't take up too much of your energy and still leave you enough free time so that when you come home from work, you still have enough energy (and mindset) left for what it is you really want to do in life.
A lot of this is romanticised, struggling artist bullshit though. And before you castigate me for that statement, I've spend years in bedsits and put many hours in at that particular coal face.

The reality is a corporate, mid to senior level job is no more difficult, time consuming or draining than any other job. In fact, it's relatively easy - reports, scheduling, meetings and making sure everything is ticking along. You don't need to be cunt to succeed and you certainly don't need to be one to do the job. You'll run into a few cunts but then there's been dickheads in every job I had since leaving school.

The only different is it pays better and allows you the freedom to both create music and live a pleasurable lifestyle related to music. New bit of kit, great lets buy it. Weekend away at Sonar or ADE, lets book it.

Fuck it, if you're going to be in a building that you don't want to be in for 40 hours a week, the best thing you can do is work out how to make it pay the best you possible can. My only regret is that it took me to reach 40 years of age to realise this and the life opportunities I squandered during the ten years previously.
I am talking about writers who are long dead, so the "shadow jobs" they did can't possibly be compared to the corporate jobs you are currently referring to.

Tbh, I totally agree you might as well look for a job that pays as good as possible,
but in my experience, the shadow jobs always gave me lots more free time and less breathing down my neck.
Back when I was still doing graveyard shifts, I could walk in any way I wanted to,
and everybody would still be fucking pleased that I was there so they could go home.
And as long as I did the job right, I never got to see my boss (who had no idea how to do my job anyway).
Trust me when I say that to me this is worth far more than a few hundreds more on my paycheck, and then having to see all my daytime colleagues,
pretending I'm interested in whatever they just watched on tv last night,
and lick the CEO's ass just cause you have to...

just not my thing.

Re: Balancing creative ambitions with real life responsibili

Posted: Sat Jan 13, 2018 8:13 pm
by Lost to the Void
The thing with shadow jobs is you don`t work a fucking 40 hour week, otherwise yes, may as well get a normal job and suck down that wage slavery.

Re: Balancing creative ambitions with real life responsibili

Posted: Sat Jan 13, 2018 8:34 pm
by [wesellboxes]
Hades wrote:pretending I'm interested in whatever they just watched on tv last night,
and lick the CEO's ass just cause you have to...

just not my thing.
Yeah, I fully get your point. In the UK during the late 80's/ early 90's you could get a job for 6 to 9 months, save some money off the back of it and then jack it in and spend x amount of time doing nothing, partying or traveling until the money ran out and then it would be fairly easy to get a decent paying menial job again. Rinse, repeat. Weatherall talks about this and it's how many clubs, sound systems and traditional indie type bands were able to get going but still do transit van tours and so on.

I was talking to a friend about all this the other day and we were trying to surmise whether this was actually available to the younger generation these days. Whether get yourself a decent job and get yourself on the housing ladder ASAP was entrapment or actually a necessity to avoid the ravages of poverty further down the line. On a bit of a semi-drunk tangent here, not sure why I mention it.

Anyway, there's nothing to be gained by being the poetic rebel in the workplace, I really did learn that the hard way and it left me near homeless. You don't need to suck cock or kiss ass to get on in a job. Just regularly turn in a body of work (that's a lot easier to grasp than your average DAW) and take the periodic chances at advancing.

I have in the past wondered what everyone else around the meeting table would make of Deepchord or Ital, rather than Coldplay but tend not to bring it up. Though decent people are good people regardless of their interests and if someone I genuinely like as a work colleague wants to talk about school plays or the back nine they shot at the weekend, I'm good with that.

Re: Balancing creative ambitions with real life responsibili

Posted: Sun Jan 14, 2018 9:10 am
by Hades
[wesellboxes] wrote: I have in the past wondered what everyone else around the meeting table would make of Deepchord or Ital, rather than Coldplay but tend not to bring it up. Though decent people are good people regardless of their interests and if someone I genuinely like as a work colleague wants to talk about school plays or the back nine they shot at the weekend, I'm good with that.
True.
I might have come across as someone who looks down on people with other interests as me, and I definitely don't mean to sound like that.
Hell, I even "trained" myself years ago to remember shit about people, little things like how many kids they have, how old they are, what their "favorite thing" is,
and I ask about it all the time, so people generally have the feeling I'm interested in them.
And it's not even that I am not, because I do care about them, and if I think they are cunts, I won't be asking about whatever it is they like doing either.
It's not that I'm faking an interest, it's just that if I would follow my instincts,
I would almost never ask about their "favorite thing", and I don't expect them to do the same with me either.

I don't know, maybe I'm just not the best one to give an opinion on the whole colleagues thing,
god knows it's great to have good colleagues, but I have worked alone for like 15 years,
and I learned to appreciate the fact that it's better to have no colleagues than colleagues that get on your nerves all the time.

I think another thing I really liked about shadow jobs is that it's less easy to become infected with the omnipresent capitalistic greedy shit mentality :
work faster, work harder, be more efficient, make the shareholders more money !!!
Last job I did I really got disgusted by that shit.
And I'm not saying this because I am lazy, because I can get totally annoyed by for example people in the local town hall that work so slow I can't stand it,
but I do get disgusted about the ever expanding need for more profit.

Re: Balancing creative ambitions with real life responsibili

Posted: Sun Jan 14, 2018 5:38 pm
by Lost to the Void
Well the thing about a shadow job is that there are fewer illusions.
You are clearly trading your time for money. I always preferred that, it's more honest in its own bullshit.
Worst job I ever had was when I was a management consultant.
It started out as a good shadow job. I was working part time, on contracts as an associate. It paid very well, I only needed to do a couple of days a week, or one week a month, I was getting paid around £350 a day.
I have a pretty good work ethic, and the company I was an associate with liked my flexibility, as I didn't mind doing the jobs no one wanted to do, the short 2 day jobs, or the ones that took me to another part of the country for 4 days (because what did I care? it was a shadow job, I wasn't doing it full time). So I was getting good feedback on the jobs I was doing (because I believe if you do something, do it properly), and the company was happy that they could just call me for the awkward jobs and I would say yes.
So eventually they started giving me more and more work, and I was earning a shit ton of money. It seemed great, but it was no longer a shadow job. It was a fucking JOB!!! I had lost the reality of what it was. And I no longer had the time or energy to do music properly.
So I had to Jack that job in. I went and found a proper shadow job again.