Twisted Thoughts And Thoughtful Truths On Thursday #001

Twisted Thoughts And Thoughtful Truths On Thursday #001

Maybe it was never sustainable.  Maybe it was always meant to lead to something else.

But we’ll get to that soon enough.  For now, lemme just explain why I’m here and what this is.

Ahhhh fuck it, I’ll just start at the beginning and see what sense I can make of it.  Wish me luck!

Some of you out there noticed I was a little down towards the end of last year, based on a few late-night posts where I was ranting about the numbers of the site not being enough to keep me satisfied.  Or at least it was something close to that effect…I usually delete my negative posts in the morning over a cup of coffee and slice of regret.  I’m not saying I wasn’t right to post that shit, of course I was – freedom of expression & whatnot for one thing, and secondly, the numbers of this site have always been in the toilet so how could I be okay with that?  Pass or fail, 98% of the responsibility for the success or failure of this whole sleepingbagstudios project rests squarely on my shoulders.  I have some assistance with the technical aspects of running a website, which accounts for the other 2%.  Other than that, every post, every article, every show, every podcast, every move this site makes and every breath it takes, has come directly from me, Jer @ SBS.  If you’re interested in the VERY basic math of it all, we’re in the fourteenth year of this weird experiment at this point.  180 Interviews, 3857 Music Reviews, 337 episodes of SBS Live This Week, 202 episodes of various SBS Podcasts in different forms, 1541 articles added to the Special Reports section, 500 entries into the Bearded Blog, and 12 official winners of our annual search for the Best New Sound of the year on our Wall Of Fame.  That’s 6629 different things.  Divided by 14 years, that’s 473.5 posts a year – and that’s only if you consider the fourteenth year, which actually just started…so really, it’s divided by 13 years and works out to about 510 posts a year, but you get the point – it’s a hell of a lot of posts, and when you consider that there’s additional components like social media posting (Facebook, Blue Sky, X, Instagram) – you can multiply any of the numbers by five (Original article post + 4 supporting social media posts).  That’s 33145 different things.  Divided by 14, that’s 2367.5 posts a year…or again, divided by a more accurate 13, that’s 2550 per year.  Breaking that down even further, that’s roughly seven posts per day, every single day, for thirteen years straight.  All done by myself personally with the exception of one article written by my homie Ryan years ago.  Then you can also factor in other things that I rarely even mention, like the SBS Secret Stash Of Stellar Singles, reposts of SBS Live This Week live music sets to our main channel at YouTube, the SBS Separated video series that I usually do each year when I can, and other stuff that never gets put onto the site like the hundreds of press releases, videos, and biographies many of you have trusted me to create for your music over the years.  I don’t have a way to measure how many more things that would be, but again, I think you get the point – I mean, I’d hope by now you’re wondering how I even find time to take a shit, or some space to eat something so that I could potentially take a shit later on, based on the math/amount of free time that could possible exist in a day with all these things goin’ on.

I’ve never half-assed a thing I’ve done here.  I relentlessly spin your music as much as I can before I even dare to write about it, because in my view, your art should be respected.  So I listen.  Over and over and over, I listen.  And then I write.  I write so many words about music and have my debates about what I think about it right here in the open for ya…and I laugh about how other sites, from our peers in the independent scene, all the way to Rolling Stone, can get away with a paragraph & call it a valid critique.  Aside from like, two independent ads for authors we discussed on the SBS Podcast years ago, I can’t recall there ever being an ad for anything on the site – can you?  Ever notice how there is no pop ups and no bullshit ads on sleepingbagstudios.ca?  That’s because this ain’t commercialism – this is art.

Your art, inspiring my art, with the hope that my art then in turn inspires MORE of your art to follow, and with the intention that, maybe the next time our paths cross, we both do what we do just a little better than the last time we did it, you follow me?  Every day I get a ton of people intending to submit music to the site by sending out a press release or whatever…and I totally get it, that’s kind of standard practice, no harm, no foul.  Because I’m a paid mercenary, I usually just kindly direct people to the services page & leave it at that.  Some take the option, most don’t but some do, and others I’ll probably never hear from again.  Largely because they think I have the audacity to charge for the work that I do, because I’m a horrible man that should slave away for free and just run a website without ad revenue, and time is just an aspect I should be willing to spend without thinking about where my attention goes.  You’ve seen the math.  Should I be doing all that for free?  I’m genuinely asking.  I’d love to, but I know that I can’t.  So when I got an email back from a prospective customer the other day that was kind enough to let me know that they just didn’t have a budget for this project but they’d keep me in mind for the future, my first thought was – what future?  I get it, making music is tough and I have nothing but respect for those that practice the art – but on an independent level, our relationship has gotta be a bit more reciprocal, or places like this simply won’t exist anymore, full stop.  And I’ll take it a step further and say that, I believe (meaning I have no possible way of knowing) that if I was to get a bunch of social media interaction, likes or thumbs up or whatever, I might not get so down about this place never doing well financially, because that’s never been close to my main motivation.  Neither of those elements have been to be truthful, but it would be nice to see that the work gets acknowledged by the occasional thumbs up, you feel me?  Here’s some more fun numbers…roughly 3500 Facebook followers, 4307 at X, 104 at BlueSky, 495 at the Gram, and 1080 at YouTube.  That’s around 9500 different people we’re connected to, and I assume that they can’t all be my mom.  I’m lucky if I see one or two thumbs up on anything I do on any given day.  Maybe that’s simply on me…maybe the quality of what I do isn’t there, though every review I’ve ever been given in return by someone who got one from me has nothing but glowing things to say about what I’ve written…so the math just ain’t mathing, and truthfully, I’m exhausted by it all.  I’m not satisfied with my personal output, as in, yes, I STILL think I could be doing more somehow.  I’m not satisfied with two thumbs up, again if I’m lucky, per day when being connected to nearly 10K’s worth of people.  I’m not satisfied with only reaching nearly 10K’s worth of people in FOURTEEN YEARS (okay, 13, that’s the number I’ve been working with most in the math throughout this article, so THIRTEEN YEARS), when I always envisioned the goal as creating a community of artists that would keep building on itself.  But it’s not like that, not at all.  Even in the instances of things like the Best New Sound stuff we do with our top ten list at the end of the year…that’s all unsolicited extra stuff I do, to help give the independent scene and the artists/bands I love an extra nod for their efforts, and give them another tool to put in their toolkit for their promotional efforts as they see fit.  Half of those on the list probably don’t even acknowledge it’s been done.  Same goes for the videos I make for SBS Separated & whatnot…most of the time, it’s simply crickets.  Yet when it’s go time for another review, I’m the first they’ll come to.

If this sounds like I’m complaining, I don’t want you to get it twisted – you’re right, I am.  This is hard.

It doesn’t mean I don’t still love or appreciate what I do.  On the best of days, I don’t think about it at all.  I just keep my head down, listen to the music, and do the work.  Those that know me best, know that I don’t do well with doing nothing…I don’t relax like normal people do…relaxing for me, is being immersed in the work.  Slow times like I’ve been experiencing as of late, whether from being dropped into an internet blackout for a couple weeks like we went through in December, or the usual January slow down in the New Year, are excruciating for me.  Not because I’m not making money or the site’s not making money, just because I hate doing nothing.

So…as I was sitting here staring at my 84^th random YouTube video of the night the other night, staring into the digital void, thinking about all this stuff I’m doing and what it’s all added up to, I came to a very simple conclusion – there has to be more to it than this.  I don’t like dwelling in the negative side of life…to me, that’s always an indication that something needs to CHANGE, because why would anyone want to stay in the negative side of life if they continually have the option to find their way out, each and every day, right?  And I came up with a couple of things – one being what you’re reading right here, right now, in what I’m calling Twisted Thoughts And Thoughtful Truths On Thursday, which I’ll try to feature in the Bearded Blog every Thursday – and the other being that I need to concentrate on finding my way to whatever comes next.  I had always thought that sleepingbagstudios as it currently stands could be enough, and I mean, from a mere workload perspective it certainly is (Did I mention I write movie reviews for a whole different site as well?)…and I don’t want anyone out there that has been a supporter of SBS throughout the years to get it twisted either – I see you, I know most of you by name, and I’ll never be able to thank you enough.

This isn’t done…I’m not giving up…I’m not going away either – but I am going to apply more pressure on myself to diversify my writing portfolio.  That means actually working on the book I’ve been writing.  That means more posts in this series, week after week, which will largely just be about whatever the heck is on my mind at the time.  Could be a rant.  Could be a story.  Could be fiction.  Could be non.  I don’t know where it’ll go or where it’ll take me/us, and ain’t that the exciting part?  I promise that it won’t all be complaints…the world has enough spaces for that already.  MAYBE it will be coherent…MAYBE it won’t!  I can’t promise you that.  I just know that I’m done feeling like I’m treading water or going through the motions…because that’s not living life, to me.  So it’s time to shake things up again.

I am a writer, first and foremost.  I write because I love it, and I also don’t fit into any other type of job if I’m keeping it real with ya.  I’ve tried the corporate route, and that ain’t for me.  This entire site has always been dedicated to keeping The Man off of our pages with his bullshit ads, and off of my back to live on the grid in the more traditional way.  No disrespect to those of you that love your jobs or working for a company either – as long as you truly LOVE what you do, then you’ll get nothing but a high-five from me – the normal pipeline of the working world was simply never for me is all.  I built myself a career from the ground up, and I’ve been lucky enough to be doing what I do for more than twenty-five years now, writing for various sites until I eventually created my own.  It’s never lost on me how fortunate I am to do something that I WANT to spend as much time on as I do with your music, and how honored I’ve been that you would want me to share my thoughts with you for as long as I have now.

But I still want more.  More outta this place here.  More outta myself.  More evolution.  More art.  More work.  More.  More.  More.  I feel like that’s something I’ve known for years, and that’s something I’ve even hinted at from time to time in those late-night rants and postings on social media that I shouldn’t be doing.  I shouldn’t be doing anything other than doing the work to reach that next level…and so that’s exactly what I’m going to do.  Whatever it takes to move forward…that’s the only direction that matters.

As always, I look forward to taking you with me into the adventures of this next chapter ahead…push, pull, or drag.

Love to you all.

– Jer @ SBS