Hey howdy!👋
I’m running an experiment.
I’m trying to replace a lot, if not most of my social media browsing-time with journaling.
I’ve been journaling nearly every day for the last month, and I thought it would be a nice habit to keep track of where my mind is at by summarizing my notes at the end of each week.
I’m turning 25 in less than a month, and there’s one thing that turning 25 had me thinking about all week: I’ve officially been in a band called Spondifferous for a DECADE.
Might sound like a time for celebration but to be quite honest I was feeling disappointed in myself the last few days. My band is a partnership between me and my best friend, and we’ve been having a fun time, sure. But lately it's gotten to a point where I feel ok with letting go of the goals I had set when I was younger:
1) Play music (one day) on a stage in front of 10,000 people.
2) Release albums that I'm proud of.
3) Find a way to document my songs, even the ones that don't get put on an album, because they’re my oldest and most meaningful journal entries and they are important to me.
And most of the people I've met in the last 3 years have no clue I write songs. So I really haven't been pursuing this seriously. And that's no ones fault but my own.
It reached a point where my attitude was, “it’s ok if I don’t hit all these goals, the journey is fun, and I’m on this journey with my best bro.”
(I apologize to all my close friends for this next paragraph😢)
Spondifferous is breaking up, and it kind of feels like I’m getting out of a long-term relationship. I think I literally feel chemical changes taking place in my brain.
But an important note – my friend and I are in cahoots on this, and we’re all good.
Truth is, neither of us really want to give up on our goals. But I think Tanner (the friend) and I, for whatever reason, don’t push each other to reach our own respective potentials. Instead, in recent years we seem to slow each other down. So it’s a mutual decision to break up the band. And we’ve been having a lot of recent conversations about how to better help push each other in the future.
So what does this mean for Tanner and I as musicians?
Collaborations are still in the books, but those would be done as two individual artists, not as a 50/50 partnership. This is scary, this is uncomfortable, because I no longer have someone to shoulder all the responsibility with. The quality of what I make is 100% on me, my art being a potential failure is mine to own, how hard I do or do not study and work is all up to me.
Starting in 2023, I'll be doing music under my personal name, Cameron Brig. And that feels weird.
If there’s one thing I want, it’s to be brutally honest with myself. I also want the ability to be brutally honest with those that I'm close to. Not to ever be purely negative – but to be as constructive as possible. And spondifferous was a comfortable situation, and I feel too young and I believe in myself too much to let a comfortable situation wipe out my 20s.
Tanner, cheers to a 2023 full of us striving for more!🍺
I'll see you around (like, fairly often).
So there’s a crazy first week to 2023! Now, moving forward I feel somewhat brandless. I keep mulling over the question, “what is Cameron Brig as a brand?” I honestly don’t know very much about branding.
I know that I’m interested in making music, and I’m interested in growing as a storyteller on YouTube. Even in that I can’t say I’m fully sure about my “brand.” But I don’t think my goals align with being the best BRAND of 2023. I think my goals focus on being more truthful with myself and others.
I hope everybody has a great week.
Cam
📢Shout outs (stuff I’m just excited to share)
🎞 Watch On Netflix – Stutz – a documentary by Jonah Hill. This is why I started journaling again. I took out a piece of paper while watching and titled the page, “Everything I ever need to know about therapy.” 😅 That might be a stretch but this documentary really gives a great foundation of information on the topic of therapy. I swear it’s not boring, I just made it sound boring, it’s not.
📖 Book – 12 Rules For Life : An Antidote To Chaos by Jordan B. Peterson I’m currently on rule eight, it’s been an especially helpful book for the season I seem to be in right now. The audiobook version is read by the author, whenever that’s the case I always try to listen rather than just read the physical copy.
📝 VideoGame – JellyCar Worlds. I just finished this game and it was perfect for playing while listening to podcasts and otherwise vegging out. Takes me back to my childhood of playing the first three JellyCar games on my iPod.
