When I got started with my blog the only agenda I had was to have a platform to share my thoughts and experiences from my life just simply for the purpose of expressing myself. Then it was a web page on a static web site and I just wrote and wrote and wrote. It was actually pretty decent.
But, then I got all involved with trying to create a list from my blog and to market products from it because I figured that there were a lot of people who would like to do the same thing and also be able to earn some extra income from it. It seemed like a simple enough and logical enough assumption.
I knew it wasn’t for everyone of course. I knew that only a few people would understand the concept. I also knew that a lot of people would be skeptical about it or think negative things about it because the platform is designed not only to be a creative tool to be used on the internet but also for the purpose of making money.
When I look at this blogging platform today compared to what it was when this began, you see a system that is a lot more versatile, has a lot more gadgets and functionalities and is capable of being much more beautiful. It is something you can mold and change to make it totally your own.
But, most people today are busy with the complexities of simply working and living their lives and are thinking more about their own issues than with helping someone else earn more money as well. There is a huge problem today in society and that problem is “as long as I get mine, I’m okay, and that is all I need to think about.” Very few people are actually interested at all in helping someone find a real way to earn more money that makes sense.
Every single day I hear people complain about not having enough money even though they have a good job. Many folks talk about retiring as if that is a compelling goal at all. Retiring isn’t even in my vocabulary. I had to stop singing, and when I look at professional athletes or other professionals who work as performers in any genre, I doubt you will find many of them who want to retire. I think they all want to keep performing the rest of their lives.
I had a financial consultant who actually asked me once, “Why does Pavarotti continue to perform?” He doesn’t need the money. I don’t know if he did or not, but I said, “Because he loves to perform and people love hearing him sing.” It was totally outside his realm of understanding. Why would you work if you didn’t have to?
I thought, “I’ve never thought about my art like that.” In fact, I never really thought of working as a way of simply making money to make ends meet. For me, money has never been a motivator for me and I realize that this is a problem and a virtue. The only motivation for me in terms of money is a negative motivation due to the fact that in life you “must” make money to pay the bills and to be able to have the kind of life that is what we have been raised to think of as “normal.”
I believe a lot of the negative motivation with money is due to the nervousness of the possibility that your way of making money is going to disappear. This is where greed originates. It is the fear that you could lose what you have someday so you had better get as much as you can now. Even Joseph of Egypt used this logic, make a lot for 7 years so you will be ready when the 7 years of famine come. It is a good reason to work hard, but it is also a rather negative way to work.
The idealist in me still lives today. I remember sitting on my mother’s bed and saying to her, “I really don’t care about anything else but music. All I want to do is to do music the rest of my life because I love it so.”
What led me astray from my own declaration was a fear that someday my ability to earn a living from music would go away, so I started looking for other ways to make money. I was interested in a lot of things, but the fact that I was doing it for money and that those businesses were all focused on making money really took me away from what I loved.
When you find your true love you must be true to your love.
I didn’t do that. I wanted to be prudent. I thought I was doing the right thing by acquiring the things that society deems so important, a wife, kids, a house with a white picket fence, security and all of that. So, I began to put those things in front of what I truly loved the most, music, and sure enough music became a way to make money and not a way to live my life.
So, when you start looking at your true love as a way to make money then you start thinking about becoming the biggest and the best so you can make more money. You start pushing yourself to be more than you are, when all that you are is much more than you could ever need. This pushing makes you perform differently and it becomes about having the most powerful and impressive instrument you can have than it is about being able to convey the meaning of a plot or a song’s poetry.
When you lose your vulnerability as an artist and try to become invincible you lose everything that made you special as an artist. Impressing people with your power is much less compelling than touching their heart with your soul.
When impressing became my artistic vision, and I was rather impressive at times, you are no longer doing what you love, but feeding your ego. So, I got caught up in the vicious cycle of trying to further my career, make more money, becoming more impressive to wow more people instead of crafting an art which is all about carving out a beautiful statue out of the marble form we are caught in as humans.
I also got caught up in saving what worldly things I had than I was about preserving the muse that I loved more than anything, all because I thought I was doing the right thing in worldly terms. You have only one muse that you can truly love, and when you sacrifice that for something else, there is no surprise when you lose it too.
So, there I am. An singing artist who now has great difficulty singing. The instrument and art I worked so hard to acquire is pretty much gone forever. How can I do music if I cannot sing? I am a singer, this is what most people see me as.
Before singing though I am a musician. I understand music. I know music. I obviously don’t know everything there is to know about it, but I am a musical person with musical skills but having difficulty finding a way to do it in the real world of music. Who is going to let me conduct an ensemble? Who is going to let me direct an opera? Who is going to want my input about anything? I am a singer, right, not a conductor or a director or a teacher.
Above all, I am a performer. I can perform and I believe that with me I can help people perform well. Even if I don’t know all of the xs and os about conducting for instance, I do know quite a bit however, I am confident I can lead an ensemble to perform at a highly professional level. I am not a musical accountant, someone who can meticulously make every note perfect, but I can take a group of musicians and help them become an exciting ensemble to listen and watch.
But, will I ever find a chance to do it? Will I ever get rubber stamped to be qualified to get a “job” to do that? Probably unlikely. Just as it is unlikely I could become a stage or film actor, I am not a “qualified” performer in that genre.
So, lets assume I say, okay, so what if I will never get rubber stamped by society to be something else in the arts than I was before, what can I actually do that I love and perform with that I have 100% control over? Where can I develop an art and make it better and better over time and spend the rest of my life working on and turn it into something that represents my life’s work and passions.
The only thing I can find that meets this criteria is becoming my own brand and building it through a blog. I choose this blog because I love the mission of the company which created it and their mission for people to capture their passion and live the life that they choose for themselves, not to live a life chosen by someone else.
Getting a job may pay the bills, but I cannot live my life just working for money. I want to live my life doing what I love. If that means working 40 hours a week so I can spend the rest of my time working on my artistic monument, then so be it. It isn’t a hobby, it never was and never will be, but I cannot really do it for the money, I have to do it because I love it, and I actually really do love it.
There is not enough money in the world that can replace the value of doing what you love gives you. Do what you love with all of your heart, put it in one place so you know where home is and build a monument to the artistic efforts of a lifetime. For great masters are not made overnight, they are made by the slow and consistent building of their talents.
For me, I have decided I am going to park my artistic record here on this blogging platform because I believe that it is the best place for people to monetize something that is uniquely them, but also can be used by others to do the same thing. It doesn’t end with this blog, but begins with it, but most importantly I ask myself the question…
“What can I work on everyday for the rest of my life that is all mine and can be the place where I create a legacy of artistic achievement.” The only answer I could come up with is this blogging platform.
So, the blog is where I create a lot of material about my artistic efforts, and I now see a vision of a future in creating books, audios and videos using the Boredom to Brilliance blog-brand as the workplace of the project. I have also come to realize that all of my work will fall on deaf ears if nobody knows about it. Therefore the combination of marketing tools and training are also a big part of what makes this blogging platform so valuable. It is built for marketing your brand. Exactly what artists need the most.
So, I have been wandering around a lot these past years, trying to find my way and I am not there yet, but now I am beginning to see it more definitely. My life’s work begins with the scratch pad that this blog is for me and I believe it is a great way for anyone to work on their life’s work and be able to earn money in the process. The goal is that every individual can pursue their life’s passion and earn enough money to do it at the same time.
My book Boredom to Brilliance was all about how the majority of individuals are lost in the vast ocean of society without a purpose or direction in their life and work at jobs to make enough money to live so the company owners and shareholders can profit from their labor. I can understand the discontent that continues to grow. It is because everyone has been taught to build someone else’s business and not to build their own life doing what they love.
The ultimate irony is, that you can make so much more money doing what you love and building your own business than you can working as an employee for someone else, yet somehow this message is not the one being delivered by governments, the media or schools.
So, when you look at society you will always see the arguments about how the upper 1% earn more than the bottom 99% combined, who knows if that is true, then you are going to get a lot of people angry at that.
But I think the more tragic statistic is how many people are working at what they love compared to those who are working for a paycheck at a job they don’t really like, with people they don’t necessarily want to be around.
For me the primary purpose of blogging is to use it as a scratch pad for my projects and to express myself with through writing, speaking and with video. It is actually fun and I don’t have anyone telling me I am right or wrong. I just go do it. So, as of the writing of this blogpost, I am re-starting the idea again and now I can’t go back because my life depends on it, not because of the income, but because not doing what I love and am passionate about represents boredom to me, and I want to lead a life of brilliance.
But why this blogging platform? Why not a “free” platform or some other company?
The reason I like this company and platform is because the compensation model is designed so it is possible for each individual to earn the same money as if they were the corporation itself. Now, it can’t do that totally, because the company must survive and serve the users, but here more than anywhere can an affiliate earn as if they were the owner of the products. So, not only can you build your own brand on this platform, but you can earn from the platform almost as if you were the one who created it.
This fact alone sold me on it, because it is exactly what I wanted to do with Boredom to Brilliance, help people make as much money from my project as I made on it, so that people would be able to work on their art and their passions and not have to resort to jobs they don’t necessarily belong in.
When I first started looking at my future as a singer back when I was in college, I had the job mindset. I loved to sing, all I wanted to do was sing and perform great music with great people. I wanted a job that would make that a reality for me.
I found it. I was so lucky to find it!
When I signed my first contract in Bremerhaven, Germany I was thrilled to have a job where all I had to do is go to a theater, learn music, do rehearsals and perform regularly on stage with a full orchestra, chorus and ballet. I was an operatic tenor soloist in a real opera company in a real theater with a real production team creating great performances with some very talented and fun people.
I became greedy. It wasn’t enough for me. I wanted to guest and sing on the bigger stages of Germany. I wanted to become free lance so I wouldn’t have to answer to a house anymore. I wanted to earn more on a single night than I earned in a month at a full time engagement. I wanted more, more, more, when in reality I had all that I had ever wanted to begin with.
My push to get more pushed me to get better, and people wanted me to be good, because it was good for everyone when I was good. But, what happened is I got caught up in moving on more than I spent time getting better and began to “not want” what I had always wanted so bad, which was an artistic home, a place to go everyday and work with people who were on the same page as I am.
People need a place to go to develop themselves and grow their passions. If nothing else, this place of the weblog gives me that.
The ultimate dream for me would be able to create a sort of franchise institution of the arts, where people in cities all over the world can go to work like the German theater system, but be partial owners of it and be able to grow in their specialty. So, for me, this blogging “franchise” is sort of a starting place for that.
Hmmm, you see, by writing this blog I am forming a vision, getting clear, talking through things with myself, and I am not worried about whether anyone reads it or not. I consider myself so fortunate to even be able to dream like this, and because of that gift I am obligated to to work on it further.
If any of this makes sense to you, then why don’t you get started today forming your vision, working on what you love and helping others build the life of their dreams. This is only a beginning and I don’t want it to ever end.
Get started with Kalatu Premium and your affiliate account today! Click here!