Life of Crime

Life has a funny way of throwing curveballs at you. It’s been a while since I last wrote a proper post. The thing is, I have a mixed feeling about writing. Growing up as a dyslexic child who went undiagnosed, school was a struggle. And back then, I hated writing. However, once I started writing a blog on my website nearly two decades ago, I fell in love with writing. Today, there are so many tools to help even a dyslexic writer that the feeling of failure, which I felt all the time back in school, is gone. But it still echoes somewhere in my memory bank every time I write. I am here now, and I want to write.

  Last year, I left Dublin and moved to France. We now live in a beautiful South Burgundy countryside. Those of you who follow me on social media probably have seen my posts about my garden, my caravan studio, which we built back in January and my adventures around forests and country roads. The language has been a challenge, I won’t lie. I did a three-month intensive course, which helped a lot, and my Duolingo streak is something I am pretty proud of. It does, though, raise that ugly feeling of failure daily. The difference is now I understand better that stepping out of your comfort zone is where you grow. And I do my best to embrace that.

  In December, I released my latest album, “Shine a Light”. It’s an album I got to record in Paris, and the songs are part of my post-pandemic journey of trying to make sense of myself and the world around me. I think many of us had those feelings of the “new normal” not making sense anymore. These feelings were also very much the reason I left Dublin behind. I needed change. I needed to get out of the city. I needed a different pace of life. I needed to be closer to the nature.

  For the first time in my life, I had no big game plan. I have been a musician for most of my adult life. I love what I do and am very proud of what I have done. However, during the pandemic, I was forced to stop playing live shows for nearly two years. When that lifeline was pulled away from me, I had to do some serious soul-searching. I realised that being a musician was what I thought I was. That was how I valued myself as a person. Like an onion, there were a lot of layers that I started to peel off. The deeper I went, the more I realised there was much more to life than “identifying” myself as a musician. There was a lot more to life, and I missed much of it. So when the universe threw another curveball with “France” written in big, bold letters, I knew I had to grab it. I had been in Ireland for 27 years. I had lived in Ireland longer than I did in Finland. So, obviously, it was not easy to leave it all behind. My leaving also had a ripple effect on my friends and my work, so I could not but feel like I was letting other people down.

  Music is still very much what I do. In a way, I have rediscovered my love for it. The seven-day-a-week grind of playing sessions and shows in Dublin pubs is starting to feel like a distant past. My body and my mind are grateful for that. I needed a break. A break that was not forced on me but a break I decided to take. Settling into a new country takes time, and it has got in the way of me working on some music. This also has been a great time to reflect on how I want to proceed with music. Once again, some layers needed to be peeled off. Even though I have worked on a wide variety of musical projects, In my head, I was limiting my music to a particular set of rules. Instead of making music I wanted to make, I was making music I thought I was supposed to make. While focusing on learning a new language, caring for my garden, and converting an old caravan to a home studio, I started to let go of these limitations. And now, I am ready to get back to work.

  Today, I released a new song, “Life of Crime”. It is the first of many more songs I will be releasing regularly in the future. We also have a major project coming very soon, which we are not ready to share just yet, but soon.

  If you got this far, thank you for taking the time to read this post. I am so grateful to all of you who are following my journey. And I will do my best to sit down and write posts more often ????

J.P.