Dear Future Rella,
I am not as scared as I was before.
Let's ignore the fact that I was supposed to do this before everything started. Shoulda woulda coulda and what not. The point is better late than never.
I didn't get round to properly documenting my thoughts and fears pre-Elephant but to summarise I thought that no one was going to care. No one was going to listen, no one was going to like it, and if they did listen; the song itself wasn't good enough.
My voice isn't good enough, nothing is good enough.
That's what I was thinking.
I've learnt over the years that I absolutely cannot trust my perception of my music and so despite what I was thinking, I went ahead with the release.
My rationale was, so what is no one likes it, so what if it's not good enough, do it so at least you've done it.
But i'm not here to talk about Elephant Future Me, I'm here to talk about Bitter, because Bitter is out in 6 days.
And while I'm nervous about it, this is no longer my first rodeo.
On a scale of 1-10 i'm operating at like a 1.5 on the nerves scale. Which is crazy because Elephant was an easy 15. Off the charts anxiety.
I don't know why i'm only at a 1.5 but I won't complain because as you know I try to live as stress-free as possible.
I think with Bitter, I've gotten even better at saying "So what?" to any negative thoughts I might have as soon as they arise. I don't give them life or consideration anymore. My conversations with myself have been going like this:
"OMG, Elephant did so much better than I expected, what if no one likes Bitter????"
"So what?"
"..."
"Bitter is sooooo different from Elephant, the people that like Elephant aren't going to like Bitter!!!!"
"So what?"
"..."
"..."
And just like that fear has no power and stress evaporates and i'm able to operate in a much healthier space.
Bitter will be released to the world in 6 days. At that point, I've done my job.
My job is to put my art into the Ether and whatever happens after that has nothing to do with me.
It's not my responsibility. It's not my weight to carry. It's not my obsession to fixate on.
A release is a mammoth task, especially when you're doing it by yourself like me. A million decisions have to be made and a million tasks have to be completed. So as we get closer to Friday i'm trying to focus on letting go of every single thread of thought I had to keep a grip on to make this release possible so that my hands are free for the next release.
Rella x
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