Being a songwriter and a poet is a journey. You are never “there” and yet, you are always “there”. Although it’s difficult, try not to measure yourself or your work by “success”. Your work may not have found the right audience, or you yourself might still be in the process of finding your voice, your style, your confidence. You might be having an off day, or week. Or month. Or year. We all get in these ruts from time to time. We’re all reaching, and often, falling short. But then, falling short is perception. We did as we did, no more, no less.

Performing can be hard. It can be downright scary. Songwriting? Writing poetry? They require skill, dedication, hard work. And because of the nature of songs and poems, sometimes we pull them from deep, deep inside ourselves, wrenching out our feelings, secrets, vulnerabilities, and putting them out there for others to hear or see. Sometimes our songs, poems, or performances don’t reach audiences in the way we’d hoped. They don’t meet our own exacting standards. When that happens, we often feel our work is bad, unworthy, terrible. Insert your favorite self-deprecatory words right here. We feel we’re not good writers, performers. Add to all of that the overarching societal sentiment that monetization = success = quality and it’s a recipe for a downward spiral.

Be kind to yourself.

When you start doubting yourself, when you start telling yourself how awful you are, your work is, be kind. When you start telling yourself you’re not as good as <insert name here>, be kind to yourself. It might be true, you might not be as “good” as someone at something. But you don’t know that person’s story, their experience, their training. Maybe you’re not as “good” as them, but they’ve been doing this twenty years longer than you have. Maybe you’re not as good at X, but you don’t realize you surpass them at Y.

Be kind to yourself.

Let yourself explore. Let yourself make mistakes. Let yourself write something awful just for the sake of writing the worst thing you can imagine, for fun. Let yourself try something new, explore something different, hop outside of your box and out of your comfort zone. Improvise. Play. Set aside those worries about how “good” you are and just be. Create. Do. Love yourself and love your works. Practice that. Remember that even the least skillful thing you create is a lesson to yourself, and that it has intrinsic value. You have intrinsic value.

You are worthy. Remember this.

So here we are, three years (give or take) from the last time I’ve written here. Since then, I have gotten a new job, then lost that job. I had cancer. Boo! I had the cancer removed and am currently cancer-free. Yay! I have written songs. I have written poetry. I remembered I wrote a different blog for two whole years filled with haiku. I may go back and write more. I have become involved in local politics. I have continued being involved in community activism. I am in the middle of planning a Pride Walk. So it’s been a busy three years. The pandemic kind of rearranged all my plans. So this it the reboot of the reboot of the reboot. Welcome (back) to the Bardic Project.