Better or Worse Off? Part 1 – Almost Randomly Selecting My Next One Hit Wonder
Last night I played an open mic. Everyone was supposed to get four songs, but by the time my turn came we had run long, so I was told to pick just two.
The first one was okay, but I could hear my voice trembling. Later I realized why—I hadn’t rehearsed those particular songs enough during the last week.
The second one was different. I really let it fly, and suddenly everyone in the pub turned to watch, for all or most of the song.
Hmm…
Maybe I actually have a good voice.
Nah.
That’s crazy talk.
Still, it reminded me that choosing wisely matters.
Which brings me to today’s topic…
It’s time to declare my next One Hit Wonder.
As a refresher, a One Hit Wonder is a process or metric goal that I commit to doing for one full year.
So far I’ve implemented four of them:
Post a blog article every day.
Average 15,000 steps per day.
Maintain my target weight while maintaining or increasing muscle mass.
Complete my daily Zeroscaping tracking process.
The first three have been added over the last three months.
The fourth has been part of my life for years.
My Zeroscaping tracking process is how I monitor my health, finances, goals, and progress toward what I call developing the freedom to live my truth. (See Zeroscaping: The Road Ahead article).
Think of Jerry Seinfeld’s famous “don’t break the chain” approach to writing jokes. Every day he wrote a joke, he marked an X on the calendar.
My spreadsheet works much the same way, except it tracks multiple habits and includes a few notes about each day.
I’ve been doing it for years.
I’m basically chasing utopia.
But enough about the existing One Hit Wonders.
Let’s talk about the next one.
I still have eight habits I’d like to implement over the coming year (see Getting Hooked and On FIRE).
Rather than overthinking the decision, I decided to let fate have a vote.
I assigned each habit a number and used a random number generator to select four of them.
Those four were paired into two brackets.
Then…
I flipped coins.
Why did I turn this into an elaborate game?
I have no idea.
Maybe I watched too many episodes of Chopped?
The brackets looked like this:
Pair One
Songwriting
Building Community
Pair Two
Daily Dancing (added to Strength Training Routines in Place)
Open Mics / 7C’s Visits
The final coin toss came down to:
Songwriting
Open Mics / 7C’s Visits
Songwriting won.
I actually felt pretty good about that.
The obvious implementation would be to spend time every day writing and recording a new scratch demo, much like I’m currently writing and posting a daily blog article.
But then the questions started.
Can I really sustain that?
Am I biting off more than I can chew?
Should I simply commit to five minutes a day?
Maybe set a yearly target instead?
One hundred songs?
Two hundred?
Or perhaps sixteen new demos each month?
All reasonable ideas.
Then Monday morning, the last day of June, something else happened.
It hit me.
This is not the droid you’re looking for …
That morning I published The Crystal Path: What Would Aragorn Tolerate?
One of the major insights from that article was that I’ve tolerated too much throughout my life.
I’ve accepted things that no longer deserve acceptance.
I’ve allowed standards to drift.
So I began asking myself a different question.
Was I better off before this entered my life…or after?
Yesterday afternoon I walked from room to room through my house, taking a visual inventory.
Most things produced a neutral reaction.
Some clearly made my life better.
Among them were:
Books
Treasured photographs and gifts
Musical instruments and Recording equIpment
outdoor fire pit (The inspiration for our Album, Hot Burning Trash)
The kitchen and bathroom remodels
Clothes that fit after getting back into shape
My laptop and a handful of useful electronics
Furniture and lamps I genuinely Love
Workout equipment
My digital bathroom scale
Then I saw my wireless Beats headphones.
And I stopped.
Not because of the headphones themselves.
They’re Useful.
But that’s not the point.
It’s what they’ve enabled.
That realization quickly expanded into bigger questions.
Am I better off because of streaming?
Was life better before everything became instantly available?
While my daughter was visiting this week from college, we talked about “renting” movies.
Remember those days?
You had to get in your car, drive down to the video store. Go in and search for the 2-3 movies you thought would make the weekend special?
And while you were at it, maybe you pick up some popcorn and a small package of candy so you can simulate being at a movie theater?
Yes, this is just about to turn into a rant about virtual worlds versus doing things In Real Life (IRL) … but I will resist for now…
Seriously, though, is my life better post-streaming or was it better before?
Yes, a movie, or even renting a movie from a physical store, is perhaps another form of distraction and it definitely puts you in a virtual world, but at least it was something that you had to do somewhat IRL.
It is a special event.
I remember when Cable TV first entered my parent’s house. I was soooo excited.
But over time, and it didn’t take long, Cable TV became what we all began to refer to as something like “300 channels of shite.”
Streaming reminds me of this, too.
Music streaming, its better, Perhaps. I do enjoy it,
but even there, it is very problematic.
Perhaps if we had all stuck to the original iPod and iTunes model, instead of the Spotify, or the Devil and Daniel Ek era of music streaming, I think we might be better off.
The internet itself?
Fantastic.
How we’ve been conditioned to use it the last 15+ years to use it?
A lot of B.S.
Some aspects of these innovations have improved my life.
Others…
No.
And that’s where my thinking took an unexpected turn.
It also completely changed what I decided my next One Hit Wonder should be.
We’ll pick up there tomorrow.
Because I think that decision deserves its own article.
At its heart, it became another experiment in creating more psychological freedom and more time Freedom as I continue building my own version of the Highway to Yeah.