Welcome, 2023.
First things first - Happy New Year everyone! May this year be the best year of your life or whatever and may your New Year's resolutions come to fruition. I'm rooting for you!
I get it, most of us (myself totally included) already came up with some pretty big goals for this year. This is the new page, the blank canvas, if you may, to really pull yourself together and get shit done. This year you will: hit those fitness goals, start eating healthier, sleep more, do more, say yes to things, travel and do all things above and beyond. You will rule the world! You go girl!
I'm not going to lie, I, too, felt very motivated during the first couple of weeks. I even started writing a blog, not this one, but actually never finished it. Good start! But that's because I wanted to give it a bit of time. I know, I know this sounds like a pretty lame excuse, but hear me out. I wanted to give "it" (mainly myself) time to see if I'll still be as excited about my goals as I was at the beginning of Jan.
Truth is - I still am, but in a slightly different way.
Keep doing what you love.
Not that you care, but I'll let you in on what my New Year's resolutions are looking like. I mainly wanted to focus on something that I can actually control, something that's within my reach and is doable. So, here's what I've picked : DJing, Fitness and Writing.
DJing.
This is the biggest goal of mine for many reasons.
First and foremost, I absolutely love listening to music. It's what I do every single day, for multiple hours, be it on Spotify, Soundcloud, Mixcloud, Youtube or anywhere else. I love digging for new music and discovering new artists/producers and new & old tracks that I could then use in my sets. Sometimes I might listen to 200-300 songs and only pick 5-10-20 tunes that I really like. It's a time consuming process, but I absolutely love, love, love it.
Another and perhaps more personal reason as to why I want to do this more often, is because it gives me a sense of purpose.
See, ever since I started playing basketball, I thought that one day I will become a pro athlete. Basketball was the only thing I thought I was good at and that's all I really focused on for many many years. However, as you may or may not know, things didn't really work out for me and after such a long time of actively playing I found myself in a bit of a no man's land. I just couldn't find anything that would really get me excited. This went on for at least 2-3 years, which might not sound like much, but it definitely felt like an eternity. I had no idea what I'm going to do next.
Although, one thing that always fascinated me was DJing. Even though, at first, it seemed quite intimidating. Afterall, I never played any instrument or had any musical education whatsoever. Turns out, you don't necessarily need any of that.
I have to say, DJing really flipped everything around for me. It finally felt that this could be something that I might actually be pretty good at.
Just to be clear, my goal is not to become the next David Guetta or whatever, my goal is to play the music that I love, have a good time and hopefully make people want to bob their heads or tap their feet to the groovy tunes that I discover.
Although, I have to admit, it's not all rainbows and butterflies with this creative process. It's definitely not as simple as you might think. Just because you know how to press "Play" doesn't mean you are a DJ. There are a lot of technical aspects to playing & mixing tracks, you need to understand how the EQs and the frequencies work, how to beatmatch and phrase-match, how to smoothly transition from one track to the other, etc... and don't get me started on music production, because this is a whole different beast altogether.
But you know what is the most challenging thing of it all? The Imposter Syndrome, which, in the future, I might turn into a blog post on its own, because this bullshit can really get you twisted. One day you might feel like you got this and then the next day you think you don't know shit and you should probably quit messing around. It's this constant mental battle that I have to deal with on daily basis, but I know that the love and passion I have for music & DJing will eventually pay off in some shape or form.
In fact, I've read a bunch of interviews with some of my favourite underground DJs and most of them never actually planned on becoming such huge names. Most of them said that they just did their thing and eventually everything fell into place. I feel like my approach is very similar. I just want to get into the scene, hangout with people who love music as much as I do and just play. I'm not hoping for some overnight miracle to happen. I'm in this for the long-run.
Fitness.
I started playing sports at a young age and I was always in a pretty good shape. However, I often struggled with consistency, especially when it came to weightlifting. Back in the day, when the living was easy, I had coaches who told me what to do, they motivated & pushed me to get into the gym and put in the work, but now, that's different. Now, it's completely on me to get my ass over to the gym and push myself in order to achieve whatever it is that I want to achieve.
Again, not trying to be the next Schwarzenegger, but I want to see a bit of a physical transformation. Afterall, who doesn't want to look good?
Who knows, maybe one day you will get to see the before and after pic of me haha
Writing.
Just the fact that I'm doing this right now is already a big step in the right direction. I may not be that good at it, but I do enjoy expressing my thoughts, feelings, emotions and my point of view through this medium.
Again, I think my biggest challenge with writing, for me, is consistency. I need to get into a habit of writing, whether it's about life, sports, travels, music or anything, just write.
Someone might read it.
I hope I can pump-out at least 1 post a month and that's not because I have to, but because I want to.
It's a form of meditation for me.
Lately, I've been contemplating writing about a few different things: the electronic music scene here in Vancouver, my creative struggles & inner battles, my vagabond lifestyle and the thought process of a soon-to-be 30 year old who is still trying to figure shit out and much more.
But okay, for now, at least 1 post a month. Okay? Okay.
Wrap it up, pal.
So there you go, my 2 cents on my New Year's resolutions. I know this is a process and nothing happens overnight, but I'm willing to take baby steps in order to get to where I want to get to. I'm glad I'm writing and I'm glad you're reading this.
On that note, I really hope that YOU are crushing YOUR own personal goals and are living your best life. Be happy, stay healthy and do whatever you want to do.
P.S.
Would love to hear if anyone can relate to any of this mess.
Sincerely,
Vinny The Guy