Will someone please pinch me?
Of course there is so much more to that type of job than sipping lattes at Starbucks and writing cool melodies and piercing lyrics on a clean silver Mac Book Pro. (Okay, we all know my Mac isn't clean. I have a toddler. Okay, we know it's not all my toddler's fault.)
The Singer/Songwriter life is actually less glamorous than most people think it is. I know Instagram puts a hazy glam cam on it all, but it's just that. A cam for glam.
Unless you're one of the gifted few who can sit and pop out songs like a toaster oven, writing music can be grueling, discouraging, and tedious.
But whose job isn't at one point or another?
If, ten years ago, someone would have told me what my life would look like in June of 2014, I would have laughed in their face.
Me? Songwriting and leading worship for a living? No. I'm going to be a psychologist.
Yea, okay.
No seriously. I want to be a psychologist. Or maybe an English teacher. I don't know, I haven't made up my mind yet. Or a whale trainer. The jury's still out, but there's no way I'm going to make a living singing and writing.
Oh little Jules of little faith.
Deep down I knew, if someone handed me a singer/songwriter contract, I would have taken it in a millisecond. It was my dream job. But dream jobs are hard to come by. And as a 16 year old, thinking about college degrees, "Bachelor in Singer/Songwriter-dom" was laughable.
Until June 2014. When this guy handed me a singer/songwriter contract and said, "Welcome to the team."
But here's a secret: This "dream job" of mine, came with a lot of hard work and patience, but not in the ways we usually suspect.
I didn't work to be a songwriter. I just wrote songs.
I didn't work to be a singer. I just sang, wherever I was, with whoever would let me and sing along with me.
I didn't work to be a songwriter. I just wrote songs.
I didn't work to be a singer. I just sang, wherever I was, with whoever would let me and sing along with me.
Dreams don't happen in a moment. They happen over thousands of moments stacked on top of one another. (Tweet it!) They happen by sewing one stitch at a time, in the direction the fabric leads.
My favorite author sums this concept up of living our dream lives this way:
“Everything is interim. Everything is a path or a preparation for the next thing, and we never know what the next thing is. Life is like that, of course, twisty and surprising. But life with God is like that exponentially. We can dig in, make plans, write in stone, pretend we're not listening, but the voice of God has a way of being heard.
It seeps in like smoke or vapor even when we've barred the door against any last-minute changes, and it moves us to different countries and different emotional territories and different ways of living. It keeps us moving and dancing and watching, and never lets us drop down into a life set on cruise control or a life ruled by remote control.
Life with God is a dancing dream, full of flashes and last-minute exits and generally all the things we've said we'll never do. And with the surprises comes great hope.”
- Shauna Niequist, Cold Tangerines
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What dream do you feel is unattainable, laughable even, yet it burns in your heart to do?
