Space Cadet

Dude. :o :cool:

Younger now. :confused: It always used to be older. I've been about 18 or 20 for the last 18 or so years now. When I was about 10 people used to ask me when I was graduating from high school. When I was in my teens, people used to think I was in my 20s or 30s. In my early 20s it finally stopped. I was my age. Once I hit my mid 20s, people started thinking I was about 19 or 20. Seriously, my last boss finally got the nerve to ask how old I actually was after a couple of months. He had been really confused because he thought I was about 19 and yet I talked about having gone to university. One time I bought some wine as a housewarming gift and I honestly thought the girl was going to confiscate my id as a fake. Kids who were way younger than me only had a glance at their id. For me she held a whole line up waiting while she looked at it, and then looked at me like I was a crazy person, and then back at it... I guess not obviously aging is a good thing, but it's kind of awkward.

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ipbobacFiUY]YouTube - New Order - Crystal[/ame] :dance: :dance: :dance:

Wow, this is hard. There's hundreds of songs I know about 2/3 of the words to, but very few I know ALL the words to. Only a very few where the lyrics have a lot of specific meaning for me. [ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GGdyG_83nX4]YouTube - Arcade Fire - Wake Up (Unstaged)[/ame]

Huh? :huh: What I mean is, if you aren't so great at academics, maybe you'd enjoy something more hands on and involved like electrical work or graphic design or carpentry or... there's all sorts of things. I don't know what you would have for trade schools, but here trade school costs a lot less than university, takes less time, and you just learn the specific job skill that you want rather than all sorts of academic stuff. If something hands-on like pottery appeals to you, you might enjoy learning a trade.

Maybe you should study some sort of a trade?

2. Skills. When your life plans eventually change (which they will even if you are a successful musician), you will find that you need certain skill sets you didn't before. Your life will depend on transferable skills that you can take from one type of job to another. Don't let choosing one field be an excuse to let your academics and other skills slide, because you can use transferable skills in all sorts of things, and the more of them you store up the easier it will be change or to do something completely different if the time comes. For example, all through highschool, I made my own jewelery. Because of all the craftsmanship skills I developed then, I found that when I got into electronics all of the things I had learned as a jewelry maker also applied to assembling and repairing circuit boards. They don't seem related, but they take identical skills, and because I had made jewelry for fun, that skill set already fit my personality really well. On the other hand, because I had spent so much time studying English in university, my math skills had faded out of existence and I really, really needed those in electronics. My life would have been a lot easier if I had kept my math skills top-notch. Good musicians learn a lot of skills they can use in all sorts of jobs later. Don't tell your parents: "I'm going to move to England and be a musician." Tell your parents: "I'm going to be a musician. I am going to need to learn these skills to do it well, and I can use these skills in these other jobs later." Make a list. Write out the skills you will need, how you plan to develop those skills, and what other jobs you are interested in that also use those skills. Show that list to your parents. That list will show your parents that you are serious, that you've thought it out carefully, and that aiming to be a musician is the beginning of a large number of good, prestigious careers rather than a dead end. Having a skill-based plan like that will show you have lots of backup options through music rather than instead of music. As a musician, you could need math and accounting skills, social and public relations skills, public speaking skills, language and writing skills, business skills, management skills, and art and design skills. Really good math skills may mean the difference between whether or not you can pay your rent or record your next album. If you can do math in your head fast it means a concert promoter won`t be able to cheat you out of what he owes you (and they will try.) It will mean a better diet because you will be able to figure out how to stretch a tiny budget farther by figuring out what is really important and what corners you can cut and knowing how to stick to that budget. It could mean being able to figure out how to pay your help what you owe and still have enough to get a new instrument you need afterward. It could mean the difference between success and failure as an artist. These days you will have to do your own public relations to promote yourself and you will probably do your own management, so social skills (interacting with the public, the press, and business people), and public speaking skills are important. Learning how to make important contacts, how to talk to promoters and how to schedule things will be essential. Scheduling is a learned, transferable skill in anything you do. Take lots of English classes, because if you can write well, you can promote yourself well. Studying poetry is good for songwriting, but learning how to write prose and essays may be your ticket to being taken seriously when you can write your own blog and press releases, ect. Also, writing book reports requires the same skills that studying a legal contract does. That's why so many lawyers study English first. If you want to be a musician, you will need to know a lot about contracts, how to read them, and what they mean or labels, managers and promoters can and will take advantage of you. If you have any success at all, you won't just be managing your own career, you may be looking after bandmates, roadies, and other employees. Learning how to manage people isn't something that they teach in school, but it requires specific skills no matter what type of management it is. Volunteering for a charity or working your way up through a part time job might be the best way to learn how to work with and manage people. If you tell people in a volunteer position that you're trying to learn PR and management skills, they may put you in a position where you can pick a lot of those skills up. For instance campaigning for money for a charity will teach you how to make contacts, interact with the public, possibly look after other volunteers, and importantly, ask for money- which you will do a lot of as a musician. Passing the hat is pretty much status quo now if you aren't on a label. Studying things like art, graphic design, and web design could really help you promote yourself. Art can teach you new ways to think about your music as an artistic statement. Web design and graphic design will build on a general art background and will mean you will be able to manage your image in the digital world without worrying about paying someone to do it for you. Even things specifically for your music involve transferable skills. Mastering an instrument teaches perseverance and dedication. No matter what you do with your life, learning perseverance and dedication will mean you can succeed at whatever you do where others would fail. All the skills I've mentioned combined with dedication set you up to be a brilliant entrepreneur. Voice lessons also prepare you for public speaking. Public speaking, PR, and legal skills (from English class) could set you up to be a great politician or lawyer. Writing and PR skills can lead to a career in journalism. You will probably want to know a lot about recording techniques and musical equipment if you want to make an album. But that also sets you up to be a recording engineer or a technician. Recording engineer and technician skills can set you up for a career in broadcasting. Now in the process of learning all these skills for your music career, you will probably find certain areas you really love more than others. That's when you figure out what you really want to do with your life, and any path you decide on has the same thing happening. Any one area has dozens of related jobs. Which is why you shouldn't stress, just pick something. Your part in it will be revealed later. Finally, if the day comes where you still want to be in the music industry without being a musician, because they're all related to music, learning these skills can get you a good job in the industry. There will always be a need for PR people, journalists, managers, technicians, recording engineers, web designers, broadcasters of one sort or another - whatever you turn out to be good at.

Short answer? You don't know. Only a gifted few have their future path figured out as a teenager. Long answer? I'm almost 29 and I didn't know for sure what I wanted to do until a little over a year ago. I had made up my mind and started in that direction a dozen times over before I found something that truly mattered to me as a career. I think the important thing in highschool is to figure out what your strengths and weaknesses are in terms of personality and skills, and which ones can be improved. Then look for a field that interests you and which might fit your personality and range of skills well. When you figure out more about yourself and the world, having a general direction or two will help you figure out your next step. What you're aiming for now isn't a life sentence, it's a way to overcome inertia. Plus if you realize you're going in the completely wrong direction in a few years, you can go in a completely different direction then when you know more. Most of your friends who think they know exactly what they are going to do will have completely changed their minds by the time they're about 22 or 23. None of you have even discovered half of your talents, strengths and interests yet. A lot of them don't reveal themselves until after your personality has gelled in your mid 20s. Every time a new talent or interest reveals itself you have to decide whether to adjust the road you're taking so that you can embrace it and nurture it, or whether to press on towards your previous goals. That's what catches the people who figure out exactly what they want their life to be like off guard. Their plans were too rigid and then when they need to change they have trouble changing. Most people get a mini-mid life crisis at 25 when things go wrong. Many of the people who don't go through that and get exactly the life they planned reach their mid 30s or 40s and it all falls apart because they realize they've been working toward the goals their teenaged selves wanted and their adult selves actually want something very different in life. If you're really talented at music, and that's really what you want to do, go for it. You're young, you can always start a backup plan later, and you might regret not trying later if you don't. Just remember 2 things: 1: you will always be poor. Even very successful musicians don't usually make enough money to ever live a standard middle-class-style life. I remember Torquil Campbell from Stars once joked that if he started up five different bands he might finally make enough money to match an average salaried employee. And he's good. he's popular. He works hard all the time. If a lifetime of crappy apartments and a bohemian lifestyle appeal to you, don't let parental fretting hold you back from pursuing it. But prepare yourself for it ahead of time, because you will never have nice things. They shouldn't be important, but they are to some people. If making music means more to you than security and owning more than 2 pairs of shoes, then you might be cut out to be a musician. 2. Transferable skills.... which is really long winded so I`m going to post this now and get back to the second part in a bit.

Hey, someone likes you. What's not flattering about that? :shrug: I guess I would react to it the same way I would react if one of my good guy friends who I care about dearly but in an entirely platonic way said the same out of the blue. I'd try to pull my head together so I wouldn't say anything to stupid, and I would talk to them about it. Say how flattered I am and how much I do care about them and value their friendship, but explain that a romantic relationship isn't an option for us. It takes a lot of guts to confess something like that. At the same time, if it was a girl who I was close to and I really truly had no idea that they even went that way, yeah that would be really awkward. I guess I would probably be a bit confused and hurt that they felt that they hadn't been able to trust me up to that point.

Radiohead

So there are a few songs everyone in Halifax just seems to know, at least well enough to mumble along to. Maybe every place has songs like that, but I've been told it's unique to us. One of them is "The Night that Paddy Murphy Died". Another is "Barrett's Privateers". A few years ago when I was still in university, some of my friends got a huge group of us together to watch the busker festival one day. It's where you wander around down on the waterfront watching all sorts of various street performers. Around sunset, when we realized we hadn't eaten yet, we grabbed some pizza from a vendor and walked down to the far end of a pier to get away from the crowds for a bit. There was a fishing boat coming up the harbour and when he got near where the buskers were, the old fisherman started blasting "Barrett's Privateers" as loud as it would go for the tourists. My group started singing along, and when the fisherman (somehow) heard us, he got all excited that some college kids liked it, turned the boat around, and pulled up alongside the pier where we were eating. He had to show us the brand new top of the line sound system he had just had installed in his little fishing boat. It was one of the most surreal, stereotypical, self-referential moments of my life. I was actually singing "now I'm a broken man on a Halifax pier" on a Halifax pier with an old fisherman. [ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dl-CfQvz21Y]YouTube - Barrett's Privateers[/ame] (And that makes two sea shanties in the first seven days. :confused: Guess I had better lay off them.)

Yeah, in a case like that a part-time job can be good for giving you structure (and money) while leaving enough time for you to figure things out. But then I've also learned the hard way that it's really easy to overthink these things anyway. Life is what happens when you dive in and live it.

I had to give up pottery because of a lack of time and money. I can't get back into it because of a lack of money and transportation. But I always have a half-dozen creative projects going at any time, so they're always fighting for priority anyway. At the moment I have a quilt to finish.

Zeroish, and sunny with clouds. And the robins just came! Yay! :dance:

Former student, very recently graduated. Now bored, frustrated, and unemployed. Durr. :(

I've done both before- the spring/summer before my first year of university I couldn't find a job. It has it's advantages. But then having money is nicer. And having a job will keep you active and thinking and doing things so that you will transition back into university easier. I know it's easy to get big plans for your time off, and think of all the wonderful things you can do with that time, but it's really easy to just give in to the loss of routine and not try to do anything at all. Then all of a sudden you wonder why the summer is over and regret all of the things you said you were going to do but didn't. It's actually easier to do those things when you have a job. Limited time off keeps you motivated in a way that structureless time doesn't.

I studied pottery for a while once. It's a lot of fun, and very relaxing. I miss it. I would be very surprised if you didn't like it. Right now I'm learning how to make patchwork quilts. It's interesting. If you're interested in drawing or painting or anything like that, go for it. Just start practicing. Classes will help shape what you've already started. If you want a good foundation, try the book "drawing on the right side of the brain" It's what a lot of art courses start everyone off with anyway. Courses for whatever you're interested in are great because you get to interact with other people and see a lot of different examples of creativity on the same subject. But if you're good at self-teaching, almost anything you would want to know is up in youtube and other tutorials, and you can learn ALOT alot from just trying something with no idea what you're doing. In fact, sometimes with art, knowing the formal way to do something can interfere with your ability to use your creativity in that medium. (But pottery definitely takes teaching- throwing a pot takes specific non-intuitive skills.)

Cold turkey for at least 1 week. Put a very brief heads up on your page first so your friends don't freak out when they can't get a hold of you, like 'I will be offline until next Wednesday' or something, but don't let them drag you into a conversation about what's going on and why. HERE'S THE IMPORTANT PART: You need something in the offline world to replace it at first. A project or interest that you can get heavily involved in for at least the first half of the week and lightly for a couple after that. Think 'I can't check Facebook because I need to work on/read/do X'. Then go work on it. By about day 4 or 5 you will realize how little you are actually missing. Hopefully, (try making a list of this) you will start noticing new things that it would have distracted you from. It will take longer than a week to get over the urge to check it, so keep up the side project going for several weeks. It will get better. When you get back on, do what they V said- typing out the address and your password every time makes you avoid it more. Stay away from aps. Only check it once a day. Limit your time on it- set an alarm to make sure you don't start the five more minutes problem. That's how I got over some similar internet based addictions. It's also how I avoided Facebook addiction in the first place. It's not always easy, and for me it's like a giant game of whack-a-mole because there's always something else to take it's place, but it does work.

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7fBZbgfKIOQ]YouTube - Coldplay - Talk - 2006 Juno Awards (04-02-06)[/ame] I was there. He sang at us and took my friend`s phone. You can see me in the crowd. (Also, good grief I look young there now. :\)

If money isn't an issue for you, go for it. You may not get another chance quite like it, and it will be good for you. You'll learn a lot about yourself, and how to take care of yourself and stand on your own two feet so to speak. You'll get to see the world from a different angle and figure out your own identity. And frankly, the second year of university is when it starts to get tough and you have a lot less spare time, so it may mean you won't have to deal with as many distractions. I moved to another country for my second year out of highschool. I have some major issues with the program I took there, but I don't regret the move itself one bit. Separated from all your traditional supports you figure out a lot about who you yourself are in a hurray. And I didn't even have internet where I went. You will have internet, and skype, and you're in driving distance so you can come home most weekends. It takes about 2 months and a half-dozen identity crisis to adjust to the new environment, after that you`ll probably love it there. Now, if money is an issue at all, you're better off living at home. University is no guarantee of any sort of decent paying job whatsoever anymore. Unless you will be in a co-op program that works out specific job placements in your field, there`s a good chance you could end up doing the same sort of service jobs that were available before you had a degree. The degree just means they will promote you into low-level management faster. And that means the extra debt could haunt you for most of the rest of your life. Living at home is definitely cheaper, and in this economic world you need all the financial breaks you can get.

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0S43IwBF0uM]YouTube - The Chemical Brothers - Star Guitar[/ame] My brother.

Don't know if this has been posted already, but even then it's funny enough to post twice, no matter which part of the old/new/oldest/middle/everything/nothing divide you're on: [ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UHS3ci9H_Uc]YouTube - Radiohead Fan Speaks Out[/ame]

I coincidentally heard this song, Great Big Sea's 'Safe Upon the Shore' for the first time 3 days after the earthquake in Japan. It's a story song, and about halfway though, when you begin to realize what the song is actually about it hit me rather horrifically that at that very moment that day there were thousands of people living that exact scene in real life. Now it makes me cry every time I hear it. Not to give what happens away, but I could only find live videos for this, so I'm posting two. This one has the best audio, but it's a solo version and the video quality is weird. [ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQRCdpZtzik]YouTube - Sean McCann - Safe Upon The Shore[/ame] This one is the best quality and the whole band is there, but it doesn't convey the power of the song like the last one did, and his voice was off that day. [ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KlZUwVTfQyU]YouTube - Great Big Sea - Safe Upon The Shore[/ame]

What kind of demented sadist would seriously unleash that sort of existential horror upon the world? :sick:

I actually liked that. :stunned: No squealing = no headache. Still not my cup of tea, but it was good.