Attitude is Everything

It still seems a little ridiculous to me but I’m beginning to think it’s absolutely, one hundred percent true. What I’m referring to is the idea that a person can change their own circumstances simply by changing their attitude. I feel like some sort of little league coach telling my bright eyed boys and girls that, “Attitude is Everything!”.

If you’re like me you are thinking something like this, “Attitude schmattitude. You can’t change things with your mind.” Well I’m beginning to think that you can and that you have to if you want to survive and be happy in this life.

Life is pretty random I think. It doesn’t care more for one person than another but it also doesn’t care whether one person is successful and another isn’t. Life just happens. It happens to all of us. You can’t escape it…ok, you can but it’s not recommended. So that means maybe there isn’t some driving force that’s going to lift you up and carry you on golden wings to your ultimate success. But it also means that there’s nothing stopping me or you or anyone else from doing exactly what we want to do.

You generally see what you’re looking for. If you look for hindrances you will find them. I’ve done that a lot in my life and I pre-empted a lot of failures by having a negative attitude at the outset. So why shouldn’t the opposite be true? If I look for opportunities I’ll find them. If I look for pathways or stepping stones to success I’ll find them. If my attitude at the outset is positive and hopeful I’m more likely to get that result.

A continuous positive attitude means a better chance of attaining success in the things I set out to achieve and that in turn will transform my life and my circumstances.

Below is a video and my wish for Christmas is that it will get 1 million views on YouTube. There was a time when such an audacious scheme would have entered my brain and been beaten down by 1 million negative thoughts about why that's not going to happen. You wouldn't be reading this because I never would have gotten this far. Instead I've decided to believe in the possibility and give it a try. So it's working already.

Watch this video and copy the URL to your facebook page. E-mail it to your friends and tell them to do the same.

1 Million Views For Christmas

Here are some fun facts for you:
1. There are over 60 million FaceBook users worldwide.
2. In the US alone there are over 100 million YouTube users.
3. Videos go ‘viral’ every day (ok that last one might not be true..I made it up. But I’m sure it happens a lot.)

Given these fun facts I decided to set myself a goal:
I decided to attempt to generate 1 million views on my YouTube video “Close My Eyes” by Christmas. If I succeed I think I will have given myself a wonderful present this year.
So if you’re reading this and you’d like to help then do the following:
1. Watch the video
2. Copy the URL (located on the right hand side of the video if you go to YouTube. I’ve also included it below) and paste it into your status bar on your FaceBook profile. You can also copy the embed code and paste it into your myspace pages and blogs if you have them.
3. Send this message to friends.

Here’s the code: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_jfZ5vXjXYs

Hopeful Thinking

Everything that I didn’t do all the days I thought about doing them but didn’t…I can still do.

I know there are a lot of problems with that sentence. I know that some of the problems with that sentence have to do with the incorrect application of the English language. But the real problem with that sentence is that it’s just what every procrastinator on the planet wants to hear. Whether or not it gives people with a tendency to put things off one more excuse to do just that though is not why I wrote that sentence.

Here’s why I wrote that sentence:

I still want to sell songs. I still want to write songs. I still want to record them and play them for people and I want to get signed to some label that will help me make some money from this thing I’ve dedicated the latter portion of my life to. That hasn’t changed.

I think there are good reasons why I haven’t done a lot of what I want to do in music. But the reasons why are not the point here. The point here is that sentence at the top of this page: I’m still going to do all of that because it’s not too late.

I saw a t.v. show featuring Sylvester Stalone a few weeks ago. He’s in the gym, grimacing through a set of some monster-lift. He’s looking huge and ripped and awful. But he’s looking awful because that’s what he wants to look like. He’s 63. He’s not a young man anymore. And that’s the point: It’s never too late to do everything you ever wanted to do.

Lately I’ve been waking up with this weird sense of hopefulness. I don’t know where it came from but its here and I’m hanging on to it.

All of this has nothing to do with the video at the top of this post. I just like the song and I hope you will too.

A Seven Hour Pursuit

Last year I moved from my sunny, warm home in South Africa to Nashville, Tennessee in pursuit of something. I thought I was pursuing a dream, and I suppose I am but it turns out that I’m in pursuit of something much larger too.

People talk of dreams as if they are specific things. The little kid who dreams of becoming an NFL football player knows exactly what position he (or she?) will play and for which team and which plays are going to make him (or her) the most awesome player that ever existed past, present or future. But grown-ups dreams are not so much about a specific job or thing as they are about quality of life.

My own dream has always been a little hazy. Industry people like to ask the question, “Tim, what exactly are you trying to do with your music?”. I understand the reason they ask that but what they don’t realize is that I don’t give a crap. How about this for an answer: “I want to wake up every day and look forward to playing some music. Maybe I’ll play for some people. Maybe I’ll just sit in my studio and write some new songs and fiddle with some new gear. Maybe I’ll play some music with my good friends who are also in my band and we’ll get a ‘new direction’ for our music. All of this will be happening in a comfortable house somewhere where it’s warm outside most of the time. Of course if I get tired of that day to day routine there will be some touring and when that’s not happening I still want to visit Europe (I’ve seen so little of it you know). My wife, who is awesome, will accompany me a lot of the time because although she is highly motivated and intelligent she doesn’t have to work and she kind of digs spending time with me. This comfy arrangement is made possible because my music pays for it. I don’t care how it pays for it. That’s not the important bit, Industry Person. The important bit is that people all over the world are listening to it and I don’t have to serve sushi anymore.”

Sometimes I think music sucks. I think this because I wish more people were listening to mine and because I know I’m better than some people who are living my dream. But I’ve done a few things in my life and here’s what I know…There’s absolutely nothing else I want to do with my life. It’s been the constant through all the ups and downs. Even when I hate it, I hate it with a passion and that’s more than I can say for most of the things I’ve done in my life.

The song “7 Hours” was written when I was newly rolled out onto the tarmac in Nashville. I was cold and missing home and my surrounds were dull and grey.

Hard to Keep Believing

Some nights it’s really, really depressing to b e where I’m at doing what I’m doing. It’s hard to keep on doing things that seem to lead nowhere. On nights like those I write songs like this and I write essays something like what’s written below. It’s kind of funny if you think about the state of mind I must have been in to write this...

“The music is too loud and the lights are too dim. I’m dealing with another difficult customer. The atmosphere in this place is hard to get around in sometimes. It ‘feels’ if you know what I mean. Atmosphere shouldn’t ‘feel’. You shouldn’t really notice it but in this place on some nights I can’t get away from it.
The computer lights glare into my eyes, contrasting with the dimness of the rest of the room. The carpet, despite being swept and vacuumed every night, is full of embedded soy sauce, wasabi, soy beans and fish. In my mind these pieces of food are intermingling and festering and becoming something like that large amorphous glob of goop from that movie, “The Blob” that eats everything in its path. If they took a sample of the carpet from here and analyzed it, like they do in CSI, they would find large amounts of organic foodstuff residue along with all sorts of air fresheners like Febreeze.
I’m leaning in again trying to hear what ‘sushi eater’ is saying. I apologize, blaming the music for my inability to hear, so as to put ‘sushi eater’ at ease.”


I stopped writing there because I figured it was an exercise that wasn’t positive or helpful to my soul.
This is my life and my dream. I do this for a reason. I do this so I can pursue a career in music. And telling myself that over and over again is what keeps me going. Sometimes it helps to write it out too…which is why I decided to let you read it.

I don't think Darius Rucker would mind me saying that I shook his hand and said, "Hi. Nice to meet you." last night. I also met John Daly and I'm pretty sure my dad will be a little bit jealous about that. I think he might also roll his eyes at the fact that I didn't know who he was until someone told me later. I kept thinking, "Why does this guy look so familiar?".

So in the past 5 days I've met three famous people and went to the Grand Ole Opry for the first time. My friend Drew Davis got me a backstage pass which was pretty cool of him.

I was a pretty big fan of Hootie and the Blowfish back in the day so it was a cool experience to meet Darius.

All of that has nothing to do with the video that I've posted here. The video is a couple of my songs. That couch I'm sitting on was given to me by my aunt TJ. Please feel free to comment on both the video and the couch.

Famous

So I bumped into “famous person” (FP) last night at the restaurant. Actually I didn’t so much bump into FP as serve them sushi and green tea and call them a cab. They asked where the bathroom was and I feel like I did a pretty decent job of directing them.

Here’s the thing about meeting famous people; They are really just the same as you and me but it’s hard not to get excited about it at the time. It really was the highlight of my working night. I like to think I handled myself with a certain amount of grace and poise but I probably didn’t. I gave FP my card and they very graciously acted like that was a cool thing to do.

I’m having visions of FP sitting in a hotel room, bored and clicking on over to my website and listening to my music. It would be pretty cool if FP bought my album from iTunes and listened to it while they were jogging on the treadmill at gym.

The weird thing about meeting famous people is that you feel like you know something about this person even though you really don’t. You’ve seen them on t.v. and heard their songs on the radio and so this person feels somewhat familiar even though they’re a complete stranger. In their minds they must unconsciously have a scale on which they measure their fans. The scale goes from “mouth-frothing idiot” at the bottom to “pretty cool and potentially memorable” at the top. I think most people would rate somewhere in the middle which is “non-descript, harmless person”.

I used to think about raindrops hitting a car speeding along a highway. If you traced the journeys of the car and the raindrop backwards to their respective points of origin would you ever guess that a particular drop of rain would fall on a particular car at a particular point on the highway? If the car sat in the driveway for a second longer, or if a light had been red instead of green things may have turned out differently. I think that’s why it’s so cool to meet famous people; at least one of you leaves the encounter thinking, “What are the chances? Sweet!” Hopefully the other one leaves thinking, “Pretty cool and potentially memorable.”