#imsorryifthissucks

[imjustafrustratedartis]

How do I become a music journalist when I’m not good at anything?

I’ve never been one to make plans for my future. I don’t like to know how or when things are gonna happen. I’ve always thought that I could go with the flow, and it works for me. Or it did, until now. Now I make lists of all the things I’ve always been interested in; baking, tattooing, bartending, human rights, films, art, modeling, history… the list just goes on and on. But lately I haven't been able to get my mind off of journalism, music journalism. It’s a great job for me, you see… I have a big problem with routines. The thought of doing the same thing every day drives me nuts. That’s why I can't seem to hold a stable job (or relationship for that matter). That’s why I thought “Huh, journalism is perfect. A fast paced job that keeps me working in different assignments all the time and with the opportunity of traveling? Sign me up”. But it couldn’t be any type of journalism, I needed it to be about something that I liked, something that would always be interesting. And that’s how I landed on music.

Now I sat on my computer for a whole 20 minutes researching “How do i become a music journalist” on google. Read the three top articles, looked for the current music journalist to read their work, but of course I would have to pay, and seeing as right now I am basically unemployed and stuck in my house with covid, that had to wait. So i thought, “ okay it can’t be that hard, I’ll give myself my new assignment. I’ll listen to a new album and then write 3,000 words about it.”. But wait a minute, I can’t do that. You see… I can’t write for shit. I’m not good at it, actually I’m not good at anything.

And that’s my biggest problem right now. I’m not good at anything. I have no creativity, I see everybody else creating beautiful stuff. My best friend tries a new hobby every week and she is amazing at everything she does. She can sew, draw, tattoo her own designs, work photoshop, she can do graphic design. There is nothing you put in front of her that she won’t be able to do. And I struggle everyday with not comparing myself to her, but how could I not? I also follow a lot of art pages on Instagram to see if I can get some inspiration from their work, but how do I do that without just copying exactly what they do. I can’t draw a frog from my mind, I have to copy it from an image. I can’t make a collage with all the little papers and stupid stuff i find in magazines, because i don’t know how to put it so it’ll look pretty. If I can’t do any of that, how am I supposed to write my opinion on some music, when I don’t have my own thoughts. 

I’m fully convinced that nothing I come up with is original, not even my personality. Everything is a mirror of what I see in everyone else. Everything I am is just what I wish I was. The music that I listen to is just so that the person that sees my  library thinks I have good taste. The clothes that I wear, I only do to get people to look at me in the streets. The movies and TV shows I see are just so I have something to contribute to the conversation. Everything I do is a desperate act to not feel invisible.

If everything I do is based on everyone else, then how do I come up with my own words to talk about the stuff I want? Can this career path help me to discover what my own thoughts are? Can this be the road I need to take to feel like a real person? To feel like I do have something to contribute, something real that comes from me and not what I think everyone else wants to see or hear? Have I finally found something that will make me, me?