Now that I’m fully back in the land of the living and feeling much better than I have in a long time, I thought that today would be a good day to reaffirm my musical goals.

And it’s this…

“To sustain a career as a full time songwriter/musician/blogger using the internet as my primary tool of promotion, networking and marketing.”

This doesn’t mean that the more traditional face to face stuff does not get neglected by the way. I actually love the cut and thrust of getting out there and networking, securing my own gigs and using the power of word of mouth advertising to create a community around me, my music and other projects that I’m involved in (such as the Open Mic Network).

Now, how am I going to achieve this? Well, I’ll do it by:

Simplifying my life I know I’ve written about this before on my blog but I do have the tendency to over-complicate and over-think aspects of my life and work which paralyses me through having too much choice.

I’ve started on the road to simplicity by finally deciding that this site is the main focus for all of my musical endeavours. In light of this I’ve just recently deleted my Orangutang Music website and redirected the URL to this site. My other blogs Songwriting Zen and Corey Stewart Songwriting Tips will follow the same fate once I export all of the valuable content elsewhere.

I will be having a closer look at ways in which I can streamline my online presence in the near future and it’s my intention to blog about it.

Focusing on my activity As well as over-complicating and over-thinking aspects of my life I also fall into the habit of doing far too many things at once under the guise of needing to “diversify my income.” The old jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none thing gets really boring after a while when you realise that you don’t get anything achieved by adopting this business model.

I know I can do a lot of things but I need to be mindful of what I’m really doing every time I decide to take on another job here, another role there.

Which leads on nicely to the last point…

Internalising my efforts I admit it, I’m a people pleaser. In the past I’ve done anything for anyone because I wanted to be seen as the “nice guy” in any situation and would do whatever I could to protect that stance, even at the cost to myself.

Well, there will be no more of that. Helping others is fine as long as it doesn’t get in the way of my own stuff.

I mean for starters I am my own web development, online marketing and music business consulting client and will work with myself as such. I’ll take on my own advice and will walk the walk that results from talking the talk (and some of you out there know how much I love to talk about the music business).

If I have time spare to work with anyone else in the same capacity I’ll do so and I’m always open to those opportunities but, at the same time, if I don’t, I won’t, simple as that.

I hope you’ll understand that if you’re the one doing the asking.

My live shows (mainly my covers gigs) and the Open Mic Network sustain me financially and give me the freedom to work on my other stuff during the day and that includes working on my health as well.

It’s my hope that I can achieve some sort of balance in my life so I can be the best person I can be for myself and for everyone else around me.

I’ve had my break and now it’s time for me to get back into it but this time I’ll be working smarter, not necessarily harder.

Peace,

Corey

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