What gets you out of the bed in the morning?

It’s just past 9am on a Tuesday morning. I’ve been awake since 6.15am, but honestly alert since 6.30am. The first 15min is just slowly coming around time. I am a musician, songwriter, dyslexic blogger. But if you look at my day to day routine, you’d probably say it looks a lot like someone trying to run a small business. I didn’t have the best of nights. I have a bit of a back injury that’s been bothering me for the past six months and flares up once in a while. Nothing serious though, just a mix of years of playing guitar quite excessive amounts combined with my promotional duties (office chair) while I’m home or sitting in cars or airplanes while I’m on tour. And to be honest, I had been neglecting my exercise routine with the excuse of “being too busy”. As a result when it flares up, it shoots pain up my shoulder and down my left arm. Again, it sounds worse than it is. I’ve done enough weightlifting to be used to deal with sore muscles and this time I am blaming myself 😉 So the above is a long way of me saying I went to bed with pain and woke up with pain. Nothing debilitating, but still an excuse to not be in a good mood. But here’s the thing. I like my work, like anything it has good days and bad days, but over all I love it. I look forward to getting up in the morning and even with this pain, I wake up in a good mood. If it’s grey and rainy day, I try to listen to the sound of the rain, if it’s sunny day well I am grateful for that. I am a strong believer in treating my body as well as I can. But at the same time, I have a love / hate relationship with exercise… It’s good for me, so I like it, but I get bored very fast 😀 So I am a strong believer in lifting heavy weights utilising strong muscle groups (legs, back, chest…) So after the visit to the bathroom, I drink some water, swallow few vitamin supplements and face my weight bar that I always keep just outside my bedroom door (this way I can’t ignore it). My weight routine is quick, usually about 15 to 20 mins and lately my preferred soundtrack for this has been Comeback kid’s new album “Die Knowing” played loud throughout the apartment. This is followed by breakfast of egg white spinach omelet and large mug of coffee, while I check Emails. From there on I am “in business”. Whatever the day calls for, songwriting, recording, web design, writing blog posts, creating digital content (Images, video, social media posts…) rehearsing new material. I also play live either with one of my bands or a trad session, about 15 hours a week and I have band practice once a week. This is when I am home, on top of this I spend a fair bit of time on tours. Last year it was 10 weeks, and that is quite normal, but it can be anything up to 20 weeks a year. So my normal work week would be easily over 50 hours.

I’ve been a musician for the most of my adult life, but the above is what my life has been like in the past 5 years or so. And all of it is what get’s me out of my bed 6.30 am five days a week, on weekends I allow myself few more hours. I wrote a blog post on What Sunday means to you before and those of you who read it know I look forward to my Monday mornings. I also pointed out that yes, I am lucky, but at the same time I worked my ass off to be where I am. I think when I was about 14 or 15 the idea was starting to be quite clear in my head that music was what I wanted to do. I’m only making this point to explain that it took me a long time. It would be quicker to get an university degree, masters and get your career up and running.

So if you feel unmotivated in the morning because you don’t like what you do, it is in your power to change it. You are the only person who can do it. It is so easy to come up with excuses why you can’t change your situation. For example time, if you wait for it, time will never be right for anything! We all have baggage, mine is a rucksack full of some bad crap life has thrown at me, but I won’t let it drag me down. In fact I used to drive me even harder. And you can too. If you get rid of the excuses, most of the time you’ll find that the biggest thing holding you back is YOU! And this is one thing that you and only you can change.

J.P.

The author J.P. Kallio is a singer songwriter
To get two of his free songs go HERE and click Download