Where to Now?

With the launch of www.patchfoundry.com this week, I’ll be shifting the direction of this blog away from MainStage (don’t worry- you can still get your MainStage fix every week here). The question is, which direction? 

This is the challenge every artist faces every day. Where do we go from here?What will help people, move people the most? 

When I’m trying to find direction this question helps me find clarity: “what moves me the most?” 

I got into blogging about MainStage because I loved geeking out over music creation software. I got into music because there’s something inside me that goes nuts every time I hear a song I love.  I’ll still be doing that at www.patchfoundry.com/blog, but this blog will be shifting to other areas I’m passionate about. 

So what has me excited right now? Here’s a short list: 

1. Music Producing. I’m finishing up a recording studio, and I’m getting ready to record my first album project in the new space in late January.

2. Making it work as a freelance musician with a family. I’ve blogged about this for awhile, but with a 7 month old and us being a single-income family (mine) I’m going to continue to be exploring concepts of how to manage time and money to create long-term stability as a career musician. 

3. 10x your productivity in everything. Tim Ferriss of the Four-Hour Work Week has always been a huge inspiration, and I’ve been applying many of his efficiency concepts to life as a musician. The techniques I’ve learned have helped me to do some awesome things in a fraction of the time (building a pro grade recording studio in a month, while being gone 4 days a week and launching a new business). I have so much to learn still, but I’ll be sharing my journey with you, dear reader, here on a weekly basis. 

4. Healthy, cheap, fast cooking. Over the last two years I have really gotten into cheap, fast, low-carb-high-protein-no-nonsense cooking. I’ve been developing a cooking technique over the last two years that can get an extremely healthy meal for two or three people on a plate in under 15 minutes for less than 3 dollars per person. Musicians could literally save thousands of dollars each year if they could learn to cook for themselves in a way that doesn’t take too much time and is healthy, and I’m hoping to explore this in the blog. 

5. Healthy lifestyle. In the last 230 days I’ve been able to drop 60 lbs and get back to my high school weight. I’ve dropped about 10% body fat, and I’m able to run up to two miles cross country and do 200 pushups in under 5 minutes. Crazy thing? I canceled my gym membership over a year ago, and I’ve not worked out more than 15 minutes at a time since then. I’ve been experimenting with micro-workouts (short bursts of activity throughout the day) and they’ve really been working for me. 

There will always be more stuff than this, but this is where the focus will start going into 2017 for the blog. I’m excited about the journey, and I hope you’ll come along with me and see where we go. Here’s to 2017! 

Eric 

Our two siberian huskies on one of our many walks. These guys never seem to have a problem figuring out where to go next- they go on our bushes, on our trees. . .