The nice thing about being in denial about the winter being here is that by the time you admit it, winter is half over. And things start to improve before the winter is fully over, so you hardly have any time to let the dread seep in, things are already back before you know it.
You also have a chance to buy when the markets are bloody because you know that that’s the best time. If you have capital anyhow.
I was smart enough to take profits but not smart enough to take enough profits. I don’t have anything to invest now and given everything else going on I’m not sure I will.
If I can manage somehow I will spend this market cycle diversifying. Stocks, metals, you get the idea.
I can only hope that the crypto winter is over by the time the AI bubble bursts. That will be some life changing moves, buying bloody AI stocks in a crypto bull market. It doesn’t seem all that likely though.
If I had to guess I’d say that we will see a delayed recovery for crypto and by then the worst of the burst will be over. Who the hell really knows though.
I am just riding the waves.
Taking out profits allowed me to buy everything I needed to make music (almost) and so I can do that now. Without any extra income I can’t really take advantage of any low prices, but I can move closer to the life I want and that’s something.
I may not be able to move out of my apartment just yet. I may not be able to take a long holiday yet. I may not be able to take it easy just yet but I can change my focus to the things I love, even if it is more of a challenge. It’s the challenge I want to be working on.
In 7 days I will received 500 copies of my live album on CD. I do not know if anyone will want it, but I’ve got to try my best to get it into as many hands as possible. It cost $1200 and so I’ll need to sell 60 copies at full price to make that back and another 60 to find a printing of my EP, and another 60 to fund a printing of our future album that I hope to release before the end of the year.
I also need to sell about the same amount to pay for mixing.
So after 240 copies I will treat everything after that as profit.
That sounds completely unrealistic at this point. I can think of About 10-20 people who I know will want to buy the CD, and I anticipate we will be able to sell 2-3 at any good show we play with more than 10 people (since some will already have bought it after a few shows).
Our last show we made $60 and dinner for 3 (2 members and a friend we treated) was $62…
So we are not even close to thinking about becoming profitable yet.
Our first goal (money-wise) is to get the music to pay for itself. I’ve said that before but at the time I was a bit too optimistic and now I feel just how far away it may be.
A few things blew the air out of my tires.
The first is that only 2 people came to see us play last show. Part of that may be because friends may just be showing up out of obligation, although there were 3 friends I know wanted to make it but had events of their own to join.
The main issue I think is that in a weak economy, there’s actually more to do because everyone is grinding and trying to keep people coming out.
In the winter we had about 10-12 people coming to our shows explicitly for us in the spring it was 4-5. Now it’s about 2-3 in the summer. I believe it is not a downtrend but also seasonal. There’s a lot less going on in the winter so we have less competition.
We have to see though.
The two shops that I was trying to book a show at have gotten distracted by all the many other things going on and haven’t gotten back to me. There is one place I know we can play in August on the other side of the city but it’s in the same town we will play next week.
So 2 shows on hiatus and 2 scheduled. One per month.
I guess that’s what it should be considering I want to keep recording. But I wish I could do more. I want to play a show a week, but we can’t handle it now. Physically, mentally, and mostly just logistically.
So as usual I was a bit too optimistic but things are still moving forward somehow or another.
In all reality, selling a bunch of CDs and having a bunch of people coming to our shows would help fill me with fuel to want to record as quickly as possible and keep learning the skills I need to make the best album possible.
I can’t guarantee those though so I need to motivate myself!
I can see old patterns repeating but not as severe as they used to, so I suppose that’s progress.
If you haven’t heard it yet, check out our live album “Resonance Experiments 1-2” on Apple, Spotify or any other major streaming platform.
A live album APPEARS!
