I had my birthday recently and I had som gifts, always nice to get. The people that make the time and effort to give a gift is a very considerate lot. But one thing caught me by surprise this birthday.
A friend of mine told me just recently that a gift that is given without time and effort, that is a gift that has no real value to him. Now there is this app where you get the information about who has a birthday and they even come up with suggestions for gifts to that person. You can even share a gift for free.
Now what is the value in such a gift?
Well the people presenting you with the gift they do share something with you and in many cases they do it out of a pure heart. But the method of giving these presents are without a doubt only one more way to commercialize our private lives.
If we don’t look out in the future, all we will be doing is sharing things thoughtless and the chance is that it will be automatic and without a care. Because face it, if things are being made really easy, there is a chance that us humans will do things that way instead of actually making time and effort to do things that gives meaning and a feeling of concern. Now ask yourself, is that the kind of gift that you would want to have in the future?
I am still grateful about the gifts I received this birthday because this is still such a new idea. Taking the time to find out how to do it and that it was actually doable to do it, give the gifts a sense of thought and consideration.
But I am not sure that I will feel the same way about automatic gift giving in the future.
There is a real good friend of mine who doesn’t give gifts that way and who doesn’t need an aid to help him remember important birthdays. He knows who he is and I really appreciate the way he does things. Maybe he can bring that feeling of thought and consideration to his new home.
Keep it up brother.
Causality
Listening
So you add a new song to ReverbNation or you start looking around at all the fantastic artists that share their music on the network. Then you realize that if you stop doing either, you will start falling on the graphs. So you start to neglect doing what made you end up there from the start, making music.
It’s just like twitter. There you need to update all the time if you want to keep your disciples coming, you don’t want to lose any of them because that means the possibility for you to spread the things you do decays over time.
But what is more important, to make the things you want or to collect disciples? It’s rumored about some guy who didn’t need more than 12 disciples to spread his word to the world. I don’t think that any of you will have less than him, so I guess it’s a fair chance that some of you will spread your word to the world.
Anyway, don’t stop trying. Making music is what it’s all about. And remember that all comments about what you do are good. Maybe someday someone tells you, this thing you did is really good. But this thing is not that good. And when you check it out you realize, they are right! And then you go about making music in a different way, still in a way that you like. But now suddenly you get a lot more people to listen to you.
Ain’t that what it’s all about?
Stay tuned.