Katelyn Loses Her Job.
I got laid off from my job last Tuesday. A brief history of my job: I got offered this job right as I was coming out of Berklee. It was a music recording equipment manufacturing company that I have a very close relationship to and the director of marketing asked me to join his team. I’m not really into marketing, but I’m into every vein of music I can explore and figured that the job would be a great way to meet people in the business, learn more about the engineering side of recording, build my resume, and make some money. I was furiously unhappy, but I worked very hard and was very good at what I did.
I won’t go into detail about getting laid off except to say that it’s never fun to lose a job, money, health insurance, etc., with less than 2 weeks notice and it having nothing to do with how you performed your duties. Lame Sauce.
But man, I didn’t realize how unhappy I was and that my job was the source of this unhappiness. When my boss called me last week to “let me go” I was furious and upset and emotional, but even before our phone conversation ended, I was feeling this giant wave of relief come over me. Max took me to the beach immediately after I hung up, and I just felt free. I felt free to fuck up, and free to be broke, and free to explore other forums of music and money making. I had been working remotely and because of this, even though I cut down my hours to 30 a week to have more time to pursue music, I was spending every waking hour thinking about my job, wondering if I had forgotten to take care of anything, trying to predict which angle my boss was going to fall towards next so I could be ready. I haven’t had a moment to breath for a long time.
Back in March my good friend from Berklee, Lucas Carpenter, came to Baton Rouge and we did a show together. He is an incredibly talented songwriter who would make it on his business skills alone, but the fact that he’s disgustingly talented as well only increases the likelyhood that you too will know his name some day.
Lucas sang this song at our show called “Dreamers Working 9 to 5″ and it was as though someone put a coat hanger into my heart. It made me realize how far away I was from what I actually wanted to be doing.
So, now I”m jobless. I have very little money and a lot of expenses and things are about to get very tight. I’ve never felt better either. I’ve made more progress in planning and exploring new ways to make money doing music in the last week then I’ve had time to do in the last 2 months. For money’s sake, if I can just get 2 or 3 gigs playing piano around town or teaching a few lessons each week, I’ll be making more than I was and be much happier than doing marketing. Ugh. Barf.
Plans for the weekend- Katelyn Got Laid-Off party at the beach which will also include a nice long run down the water. More to come with marathon training. Ahem. I haven’t had a long run for a couple weeks, but I did join a gym and started taking group classes. I’m feeling stronger and more fit than ever.
Viva Las UNEMPLOYMENT!
ps- please send money or food stamps.
The Impossible Question- What Do You Want?
I am a musician and my boyfriend is a comedian. We’re both pursuing art as a career and therefore, eating plain spaghetti most nights. The other night we were talking about how we worried we had “peaked” early on in our careers. This is, of course, ridiculous because both of us are far more capable and talented now than we were even 18 months ago. The concern is born from an awareness that as kids in college, the only expectations being held up to us was to “make the most out of the experience” in the hopes of becoming something someday. I know this is true for me. I went to Berklee College of Music where all you do is play music all day and all night and the only thing expected of you is to show up and give it everything you’ve got, and oh yeah, to become hugely famous someday to make a $100,000 music education “worth it”.
It’s easy to feel like you’ve peaked when you have been spoiled by being around some of the most talented people on the planet playing music 24 hours a day with no other worry or care in the world. Doing what we want everyday with no financial obligations is as close to “making it” as Max and I have come.. so far.
Being an artist is hard. Er. Let me re-phrase. Being an artist is great and special and unique and a useful outlet. Relying on art to support yourself and basing your identity on the success of your career as an artist is hard. Max and I are both in agreement that if we turned out to be 40-somthings still working a “Plan B” job, only doing art when we have a free weekend or evening, and staying in the same art scene our entire lives, then we would be incredibly disappointed and equally suicidal.
For those in our breed, not succeeding isn’t an option.
So we both work our butts off to work towards the next step that will bring our reputation another inch closer to being who it is we’re trying to be. However, when faced with this question you oftentimes get when meeting face-to-face with the occasional person who just might be the one to give you a break, a lot of us do not have a clear answer.
“What do you want?”
Why is it so hard for us to be honest with this question? Why does it always stop us dead in our tracks?
Could it really be as simple as lining out what you want? I think it is. I think that a lot of artists struggle not because they can’t move forward, but because they don’t know where they want to go. Decide. And if you are under the notion that becoming rich and famous is selling out, then it is my personal opinion that you are wrong. Saying that you want your art to provide for your family, to send your kids to college, to give you options in time of financial crisis such as being faced with an unexpected medical need, this is not selling out.
But I digress.
In my career thus far, this has become one of the most important things I have come to understand: Don’t be afraid of what you want. Don’t be afraid to admit what you want. Don’t deny what you want because you don’t believe it is the “right” thing to want. If you pursue what you think is the “right” thing to want, then you are not allowing your art to take you where your heart wants to be. Your goals don’t need to be the same as mine, or John Mayer’s or Mother Teresa’s. I’m telling you this because we all need to free ourselves from that expectation. Seriously. I don’t want you jumping off a building in 20 years because you worked all these years and never got what you wanted.
I’ll go first.
Here’s what I want. I want to be a great songwriter. I want my name to be on the list when people name off names like Beth Nelson Chapman and Carol King. I want to be able to fill a venue. I want people to want to hear my songs and get excited when I release new music. I want other people to record my songs and for it to grant them success in their own album sales. I want to be respected among my peers as an incredible, capable, and dedicated member of the music community. I don’t want to need this second job to pay the bills. I want my music alone to be able to support me. There it is.
I moved to Los Angeles a few weeks ago. And not one day should pass when I do not think about what I want and what I can do on that day to get me closer to this goal.
I’m a believer that you can have anything you want. Material or not. But if you can’t admit that you can have whatever you want and you alone are 100% in control of your own success (you’re in control. not the guy who asks what you want. not the guy who didn’t come to your show. you.), then you’re destined to constantly be put in a position to be let down, unfulfilled, and unimpressed with yourself.
So why is it so hard to answer the “what do you want” question? Because it makes you accountable for getting it. We become a little blinded by being in a market and trying to fit the mold of what other people need at that moment. Hop-scotching from being what one company wants to what another label wants as a way to build a career is exhausting and tough. Answering this question means that we get to be what we want and therefore, we are the only thing stopping us or aiding us in getting it.
So i just booked my first gig in L.A. because I want to perform and I want other people to watch. It took one day of deciding that was what needed to be done. More to come.
Where Do I Line Up?
Yesterday I lined out my training for my first ultramarathon, the High Desert 50k Ultra. Lately, I’ve been trying to find my place in this world of endurance running. Through my marathons, I’ve met a wide variety of amazing people. The night before the Baton Rouge Marathon and Half Marathon, I attended the pre-race dinner and sat at a table with a group of runners from the 50 States Marathon Club. Everyone at the table had already done a marathon that week and had at least 2 more before the end of the month. One gentleman had run 500 marathons. The closest I’ve ever run two marathons together was 6 weeks apart (Houston and New Orleans). Now, granted, the members of the 50 States Marathon Club that I met all admitted that just because they were running several marathons a month didn’t mean that they were racing them. Most of the time the only goal to the multiple marathons was to finish. Nevertheless, those runners who have ever completed a marathon or are thinking about running their first, “just finishing” truly is an achievement in and of itself.
At Boston you see the finest in the world. Athletes Village in Hopkinton is a collection of some of the most fit, dedicated, and fastest marathoners alive. I used to live in Boston and the days leading up to the marathon were my favorite days to run. I would go out for my last few short runs before Marathon Monday and joining me would be athletes from all around the world, all of us jogging along the Charles River, loosening up our bodies and visualizing a swift and victorious finish in Copley Square. The year before I ran my first Boston I stood outside the Boston Public Library and watched the elite runners cross the finish line. Part of me stood humbly by, cheering them on with the most extreme respect, and another part of me wondered… could this ever be me?
Women marathoners don’t generally peak until they are in their 30′s. I turned 22 last week. Now, I’m not saying to watch for me in the 2020 Olympics, but it is encouraging to think that maybe, just maybe, if I continue to set higher and higher goals, I can continue to race alongside the runners that I admire so much.
I am a musician. I can’t live without pursuing this art. It out-weighs my passion for running and therefore, I probably will not be the breed of athlete that can train up to 40 hours a week and win marathons. However, I love running and so far I haven’t let myself down.
So where do I fit into this world of endurance running? Am I a weekend warrior lining up at the start and pushing through alongside thousands of my comrades to the finish? Will I become something more if I continue to pace myself and achieve my goals in my own time on my own schedule, or is the world of elite running reserved for the runners with natural talent and speed plus the time and dedication of Olympians?
Running has saved me in ways that music cannot and music has saved me in ways that running cannot. This is all I know for sure- I need both. So for now, I’ll be another runner out on the neighborhood streets of Los Angeles, or running hills in the Colorado foothills, warming up on the Charles before the Boston Marathon, and I will give it everything I’ve got, because I don’t have to figure out today whether or not I am destined to be a world-class athlete, but I will pay the sport of running the respect and heart that it deserves every time I lace up my shoes.
After all, I’d like to think that at each marathon, there is an elite woman lining up at the start who is like me and drinks too much coffee and spends most her time on another passion, and never thought her downtime and slightly irregular training would have her standing next to Deena Kastor or Magdalena Lewy Boulet. And if she’s lining up at the start today, then maybe I could be next.
Hello world!
Welcome to my new blog.
I had multiple reasons for creating this blog. The most simple being I need to write and I’d like to keep the people I’m far away from tuned in on what is going on in my life.
However, I needed a new and creative way to keep myself motivated in my two most dominating life passions: music and running. This should serve as an interesting way to keep track of writing, training, racing, performing, injuries, accomplishments, goals, etc. I have a tendency to become obsessed with learning about the things that I love and this knowledge always translates to motivation. Having a place to journal about these things will not only keep a detailed scrapbook record, but the content should be valuable or at least relatable to other people with the same interests.
Enjoy.
