50 Mistakes I made in my music career, in no particular order:
1) Not recording and backing up work properly
2) Leaving gear in the car
3) Talking about work too much instead of doing it.
4) Losing journals.
5) Not scheduling enough time to make the work.
6) Not scheduling enough time to learn the material.
7) Spending too much time studying and not enough time creating
8) Trying to hard to appease my mentors’ aesthetics in my own output
9) Spending too much time on technical aspects and not enough time on creative vision
10) Lack of implementation of creative vision.
11) Reading the news right before I sit down to work.
12) Interweaving personal relationships too much with professional ones.
13) Being too afraid to spend money on help.
14) Buying gear before I had time, energy, space, or focus to use it.
15) Buying shit because it was on sale.
16) Being gone from my communities for too long.
17) Taking gigs which were way too hard for me without giving myself the proper time to prepare.
18) Taking “forget everything you learn in school” too far.
19) Not understanding my mentors’ unchecked baggage or trauma, and internalizing it.
20) Not making this list sooner.
21) Being too fixated on surviving and not taking the extra time to try and develop a better plan.
22) Lack of long-term planning.
23) Being too poor.
24) Being too busy.
25) Getting sick (often)
26) Poor coping mechanisms to deal with the crushing weight of being in the precariat.
27) Not exercising enough.
28) Not remembering my goals or dreams, and not empowering myself to pursue them.
29) Not believing in myself.
30) Abandoning projects without finishing them first, and other versions of not finishing work.
31) Doubting the validity of my goals, desires, and/or wether or not I am deserving of success.
32) Assuming that things will always be good.
33) Staying with other people’s projects for too long out of a sense of obligation.
34) Worrying too much about other people’s bullshit.
35) Being too afraid to seek mentorship.
36) Overscheduling.
37) Undermanaging my life and my vital relationships.
38) Being too flexible.
39) Forgetting to ask if they have a budget first.
40) Not getting a contract signed by everyone.
41) Leaving holes big enough for disaster to come through.
42) Getting too tired and then not practicing.
43) Overplaying and damaging myself.
44) Online dating in Seattle and listing my job as a “professional musician.”
45) An excess of hustle, generating a deficit of peace.
46) Continuing to put things off for later.
47) Normalizing being less than I wish to be.
48) Waiting while doing nothing.
49) Not surrounding myself with the people for whom our time shared is synergistic.
50) Forgetting to love the journey.
Michaud Savage 