Happiness doesn't exist

Rewriting the definition of happy and how to feel it more in your daily life

(Photo by Natia Cinco)

This is an incomplete list of music jobs I thought would make me happy and didn’t:

• Full-time jazz bass player

• Full-time music teacher

• Director of a cover band agency

• Playing in a Broadway pit orchestra

• Nashville bass player

• Full-time touring musician

I’ve had so many iterations of a music career, and none of them made me happy. Twenty years into this journey, I think I’ve finally realized why.

This week Cassie Roma and I launched our new podcast, and episode one is all about Happiness.

You can check it out on all the podcast apps (links are on our website) or watch us talk about this huge topic on Youtube.

The thing I’ve realized about my happiness quest - and the core message of the podcast episode - is that none of those career iterations made me happy, not because any of them were bad versions of a music career, but because happiness doesn’t exist as a destination.

I’m sure there’s someone who would find each of the aforementioned music careers wonderfully satisfying. I found them satisfying for a while and I still do a number of those jobs right now. But I need variety and balance to feel the happiest day to day. And that satisfaction can’t happen if I’m focused on just one pursuit, it must come from a wide variety of aspects in life.

The funny thing about achieving your wildest dreams is that everything gets a bit boring when you’ve done it for a while. Even playing to enormous arena crowds or being part of a Broadway show. That’s why happiness must be viewed as a verb, not a noun. You have to consider it the journey you take, not a title, award, or place on a map.

Happiness isn’t a destination, but happier is achievable every day if you’re willing to rewrite your assumptions around it.

A few weeks ago, I interviewed Tim Bern, the Head of New Markets and Education with DISCO and Partner at KOZE.

DISCO has fast become the industry standard platform for music supervisors receiving, reviewing, and sharing songs, KOZE is a global sync licensing and publishing administration company, and I can’t wait to share his wisdom and some wonderfully practical tips for musicians who want to get involved with the sync world.

Tim and I are friends from our early jazz nerd days in Auckland, and the interesting thing that struck me from our conversation was just how many iterations of a music career he and I have each had since those early days playing jazz.

Since we met, he’s been a saxophonist, bandleader, music teacher, music supervisor, publishing and licensing company founder, and business development manager.

I’ve been a bass player, singer, cover band musician, music teacher, career coach, wedding band agency director, booking agent, and marketer, and built and run an e-commerce store.

At one point in the interview, Tim said it was a shame how many musicians keep banging their head against the wall for years, trying to be a full-time performer even when it’s not going very well. Smart people who keep relentlessly pursuing it even though they’re extremely unhappy because they’re so fixated on this one version of a music career they fail to notice all the other great career opportunities passing them by. Opportunities where they may have found great joy if they’d just permitted themselves to re-write the narrative of what happiness as a musician looks like.

If he had been relentlessly pursuing a career as a saxophonist he wouldn’t have found such success and fulfillment working in the sync and publishing world. If I’d been only focused on pursuing a career as a jazz player I wouldn’t be working in Nashville or sitting here talking to you now.

There are so many other ways to have a great career in the music industry, and finding your ideal fit starts with realizing you have the power to decide what happiness looks like in your life.

You, and only you.

When we first fall in love with playing music, we often assume the only legitimate career path is becoming a performer: standing on stage and playing music to an audience.

Part of the reason is that our sense of self-worth is so tied up in our musical talent we struggle to let go of the idea that doing something else - even within the music industry - means failure.

But there are so many other ways to have a career in music. And becoming an independent musician builds skills you can apply in many roles other than a performer.

If you can learn to play an instrument, you can teach, and if you can book and advance shows, you can work in tour management.

If you can write lyrics and plan an album release, you can write about music and work in event production.

If you want to stay in music but off the stage, you could work in a guitar store, build guitar pedals, become an instrument luthier, or review microphones on YouTube.

Even beyond the music industry, your skills and experience as a driven, independent, creative person are easily transferable to small businesses and other creative industries.

Your drive and passion could be channeled into running a retail store. Your ability to negotiate gigs might be useful in a sales role. Understanding the nuances of the human experience through songwriting might lead you to become a counselor or coach.

You don’t have to quit performing to acknowledge that maybe it will never be your full-time gig, and you don’t have to make your living from your music for it to be a valid and valuable aspect of your life.

Accepting that full-time performing might not be the right (or only!) path for you isn’t admitting defeat. It’s opening the door to different paths in and outside the music business you’ve been too tunnel-vision to notice until now.

The key is deciding what a happy life looks like for YOU and not worrying what other people think of your version.

Check out my new podcast and listen to Episode One - Happiness on all the podcast apps (links are on our website) and Youtube.