I've been thinking a lot about identity. Specifically, identity when it comes to what you create and share with the world. What is it that makes you 'you' in the world of creative work.
For many years I called myself a "composer" because I composed music. Then as I became more entrenched in the world of trailer music I called myself a "trailer music composer" because I was composing music for trailers. It felt simple and clear.
Then I started creating courses, YouTube videos, podcasts and articles around composing music. This is when I lost my way.
I was no longer just a trailer music composer, I was also now a podcaster, YouTuber, blogger, and course creator. I was many things and as a result I lost my focus.
I could still call myself a trailer music composer because I did that but I also wanted to reflect the many other things I did. I fell back to Austin Kleon's tagline, "A writer who draws".
I liked that, so I was a composer who writes? No that didn't work. It made me sound like a writer. A composer who creates content? No, too wordy. A composer, podcaster, YouTuber and blogger? No, too many things.
Dammit.
So I left it alone and just saw where the wind took me.
Somewhere along the way I took some time off from writing trailer music. I didn't stop, I just stopped producing loads of it. I went from maybe an album a month to an album a year. I enjoyed this time off but it left me with another problem.
I felt like I could no longer call myself a "trailer music composer" because I wasn't doing it as my main thing. I felt like a fraud calling myself that so I went back to the trusty old "composer" but it didn't solve the problem of all the other stuff I do. So I thought, "why not just stop most of the other stuff and see how you feel?"
So I stopped producing podcasts, Youtube videos, shortform videos, blog posts, newsletters, and any other forms of content just to see how it felt and if I was happy just writing music again.
Sidenote: If you follow me in anyway, this would explain my relative disappearance from your various feeds.
Over that time off I re-floored the ground floor or our house, refitted our kitchen and utility room, built monkey bars and a sand pit in the garden for our kids, and kept writing music and running my community.
So, does that mean for that time I was a kitchen fitter, floorer, and general handyman as well as composer?
Or am I just overthinking it all (as usual) and I am just a composer who likes to do other stuff too...
