“Too many times you're turning up the pressure, only to find the air has left the tube...”
Steve Oliver - “How Will You Know” from the World Citizen CD


It just happens that way (to quote the title of Mindi's first album). You are really passionate about something, over the years it brings you a reliable income and just generally lights up your life. New music arrives and provides goosebump moments. You hear songs that make you want to tell everybody they must hear it now! Concerts fire up the adrenaline and give you the chance to experience the joy of live performance and the delight that comes from being surrounded by others who are into it too. When it is your job, however, there is always this little undercurrent that can shadow the mood. The feeling of always chasing something – higher ratings, more readers, the next job (if you don't get higher ratings or more readers you'll need one), the next big story or interview. The need for access to the things you need to get the work done, whether it is pre-release music, artists to interview, or getting close enough to the stage to see and hear what you are supposed to write about. It crosses your mind that other people are doing more than you are and doing it better which makes you want to do more and do it better but that thought only leaves you as stressed and exhausted as reading this sentence just did. Burnout sets in.

Sometimes one little thing goes wrong and the whole house of cards tumbles, even if you've been hit by lots of bumps in the road before and just stumbled forward. Those of us in the radio game have been through a maze of ownership changes, layoffs, format changes and show cancellations. Concert promoters have to deal with venues that decide to quit using live music, people who stay home because they are broke, musicians who need to get paid for what they do so they can support themselves, and people who go to one free event and want everything free from that point on. Musicians have watched record companies fold, their traditional means for exposure – radio- crash and burn, digital distribution and per-song sales eat into their revenues (not to mention illegal sharing, which was always a youth culture thing but now those young ones are growing up and some are not growing a conscience as they age). Web based media has its own bag of gremlins. It doesn't pay a lot, if anything, so you have to have a “daytime job” that is often not related to doing what you love. But you've gotta pay the bills and most web content producers pay out more to keep their content online than they bring in so it becomes the way you support your creativity habit. So you sit down to do something important and wonderful, and just when you hit your zone it's time to go to work.

Then one day a CD arrives with yet another cover of a song you are totally sick of. Or you go through a stack of new releases and everything that arrived in that batch is imitative and uninspiring. Maybe some overzealous security guy disregards your credentials because you're female so you must be a stalker or a groupie. The interview you really wanted to do falls into some corner of cyberspace oblivion and you just can't seem to get connected or get it done, or in the process of getting it done some device you're using  to record or play back decides not to work anymore. You throw up your hands or just shrug your shoulders and turn away from the blank white page on the screen and towards the backlog of favorite shows waiting on your DVR.

Do you step back or continue to move doggedly forward with your head hanging down and your tail between your legs? If you do try to plod along is it at the expense of the quality of the work you deliver? You can never do your best when you're running on empty and putting out anything less can fuel the spiral.

But here's the thing: inspiration arrives, usually out of left field and at just the right time. It can be one tiny little thing that chases cobwebs away, kicks the doors wide open and flips your trip. A call from a friend, a line in a song, something someone says on a show you are zapping past while you channel surf. But here's the other thing. In this constant contact 24/7 world we have created we feel like we constantly need to be “on.” Human beings weren't wired that way. We need time to step back, breathe, and rekindle the fire. Whatever you do, please take time to step back, breathe, and do things you enjoy. If we don't, when big inspiration comes flying in we may be too darn tired to notice it, much less nurture it and share it.