passion // Joshua Wagner Online

Consuming vs Producing

May 17, 2009 | Art | Life

Here’s a quickie for the start of the week.

I’ve taken a little break from tweeting and blogging for the last week. Part was for vacation. Dusty and I went to Pigeon Forge, TN for a few days. We had a great time! No computers, no Twitter, just us. Wonderful.

But it did cause me to think about producing and consuming.

Lately I have been producing a lot. I’ve been blogging, Wordpressing, and Tweeting so much, I drained myself. I’ve blogged before on the value of silence before. I think I relearned that this week.

So, to keep it short: sometimes you need to just sit back and consume life. By that, I mean to enjoy time with family and friends, to go out and relax in the woods, to experience at art as opposed to creating art. When we overproduce, we empty ourselves. And when we are empty, nothing overflows. Our art, our work, our passions come from that overflow. Remember this next time you push yourself too hard. Take an hour, a day, a week to refill yourself. It’ll do you good.

So, what recharges you? What drains you? When do you need a break most?

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Integrity

January 5, 2009 | Leadership | Marketing

One thing to always remember, whether you are a buisness person, a musician, an artist, a writer, whatever; be somone of integrity.

In this world of growing transparency and information, what you say and do will be seen by someone. Your business will get word-of-mouth reviews by previous customers. If you have treated that customer with integrity, they will most likely recommend you. As any kind of artist (visual artist, musician, writer, etc.) you must be an artist of integrity. People generally see when you’re creating art for non-creative reasons. Personally, I think the music business is putting out much that isn’t really art anymore; it seems to be too much about the money.

Here’s an example. A writer should write for themselves first. By this, I mean that if writing is not fun or enjoyable or rewarding for the writer, then the writing will suffer for it. The writer can never please everyone, and if that is the only reason to write, then the writer will always be disappointed. Example number two. Why do you think that so many sophomore albums do poorly compared to the first album? The artist had spent years perfecting the craft of being what they were. Once that hit big, they were asked to write ten new songs for the next album in a fraction of the time.

Just remember why you started doing your thing to begin with. Find that passion. If your work is full of that passion, coming from that integrity, then someone will enjoy it. And isn’t that the point?

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