30th of August Blog update

This week has been back to balance kind of week for me. Sometimes it’s good to put your self first 😉 I had time to concentrate on all aspects of my work, without the need to rush. And boy did it feel nice. Having said that, I’m taking some time off in few weeks time. And to be able to enjoy my time off, I need to get quite a lot of work done before I go. So it will be few busy weeks ahead.

But the thing about songwriting, as well as blog writing is that you never know what the creative mind digs up. So I am actually exited about this workload more than anything else. Amanda Palmer had a great description for art in her book “Art of Asking,” which by the way I highly recommend. She talked about how art is about connecting the dots. Right now I feel like some of the dots I am trying to connect are far apart. But if I manage to find a way to connect them, maybe the results will be something just a little bit special 😉 But more on that soon.

I got caught in the rain one of the days this week, which is not uncommon in Dublin. But as the sun was peaking through the clouds, it painted a beautiful rainbow over the city 🙂 I hope my photo o. This page does some justice to its beauty.

I don’t know if it is because I started writing down here on my blog the lessons the week gone by brought with it, but I really feel like this has been a year of learning for me 🙂 And I truly hope you find some it useful as well. So what did I learn this week:

1. I learned a new definition of freedom. And this has been BIG one! As some of you know, few weeks after my fortieth birthday back in May, I decided to take a longer break from alcohol. The longer I’ve been off it, the more I seem to enjoy sobriety 🙂 I feel free, in away I haven’t felt in a long time.

2. It ain’t no secret that I have fascination with nutrition. One of the reasons behind the decision to “knock the drink on the head” was little bit of weight management. I wasn’t really massively overweight or anything. But before my father passed away, only few years older than I am right now, he was on blood pressure medication. So I wanted to give my body the best possible chance to face the next forty years of my life. I’m a big believer in getting the biggest results with minimal effort. So for the past few months I read a quite bit on this subject. I’ll get more into what I’ve learned and put to practice in near future, but for now, I learned how much better I feel by eliminating sugar from my diet. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll be the first to admit that this might not be for everyone.

3. When someone close to you is going through stressful times, not only listening, but asking the right questions can be extremely supportive.

So there we go. Now let’s get into this weeks blog posts:

This weeks song tackles an important subject, so please do me a big favour and check it out and share:

Wheels for Wings

Monday’s block post looks into how as soon as there is profit to be made out of something, the greed starts to dictate. So I asked the question, Is money making us sick?

Is money making us sick?

Artist should have their own core values and stick to them:

Quick tip 161 Core values

I believe it is important for any artist to get inspired by other artists:

Musicians, listen to music!

We all know that one person who talks about dong something, than actually getting stuff done:

Quick tip 162 Make your words count

What if I told you that you are in control of your own creativity? Here’s my thoughts on the subject:

Start working and inspiration will come to you

What is your brand? What does it look like? Have you given this any thought?

Quick tip 163 Independent brand

Did you know there are eight different types of record deals?

Record deal

There are times a particular job does not pay enough. When this happen, ask your self can you learn something new from this particular job?

Quick tip 164 Value of learning

If you base your career in music trying to sound like someone else, you need to read this:

Quick tip 165 Don’t try to copy

And in this Saturdays blog post, I talked about how today it is easier than ever for us musicians to connect with the music fans, and how we should try to make this as personal experience as possible:

Connection

And that wraps up another week. Let me know your thoughts on this weeks song and blog posts. I’ll have another busy week planned next week as well, so stay tuned 🙂

J.P.

The author J.P. Kallio is a singer songwriter
To get EIGHT of his songs for free go HERE