Happy Holidays
At this point, I just don’t want to be cliche.
I love the holiday spirit, but I also despise how fake we are.
I was thinking of writing a blog post dissecting my disdain of the corporate greed holiday, but I feel like I’m just being bitter, it’s a beautiful and symbolic time that a lot of people really cherish. I don’t want to ruin that for anyone, so this year, I’ll go even bigger and talk about culture!
First off, to me, the whole idea of Christmas—removing the religious implications—is about connection and gratitude. The core value of loving gift giving without expecting anything in return, is the core element I try to take with me from this time of year. I expect nothing in return for sharing my gift of creativity and I want to connect with as many people as possible. I’m so grateful for the gifts that I have and I want to use them for good.
As a society, we need to be in survival mode most of the time. As Americans some of us have the luxury of not always being in survival mode, but non-the-less, they still deal with stress and are constantly feeling like they need to stay on top of things. Blanket statement incoming, but I notice that we are all very disconnected from the world around us, yet so connected to whatever corner of the internet/economy we’re into. Aside from other issues I’ll go into soon, I see one huge problem with that…I need people to be inspired to share my music with other people. That is a fact. Another fact is how it’s hard to grab someones attention when they’re in that disconneted mode. If my music isn’t quite in their corner of the internet, they’ll just keep scrolling. I’d like to think that everyone who comes across my music will be touched deeply and want to share that feeling with someone they cherish, but that’s wishful thinking. It’s hard to grab their attention with content, and it’s hard for me to focus on making that kind of content. I don’t want to manipulate people into watching my Instagram reel so that I can get their attention. That whole idea makes me sick.
Anyway, Christmas is at the end of the year when we all feel burnt out and tired from trying to survive. We’ve been disconnected all year and we’re tired, but we need to put a good face on to spread ‘holiday cheer’ as best as possible. Since we don’t value balance in our culture, we better get all of the family time in that we’ve been missing, and we better have enough in our budget to buy all of those gifts that we promised, and hopefully we have enough time still to do some work. It’s too bad that we can’t be in a head space all year to be able to spend time with loved ones and to work on ourselves and to not worry about the money. I’m just not realistic thinking that way though either, It’d be great if year-round we valued the holiday spirit, but how could that realistically work? There are plenty of ways to be giving gifts to the ones you love most. Especially acts of service or quality time are great options, but if you’re roped into the system and have a job to answer to, bills to pay, etc. then you’re just shit out of luck!
It’s interesting to me that we idealize community, but we can barely take care and build up the community closest to us. Like we build up our Instagram, Twitter (X), or Facebook accounts into a mighty army of followers, or we build up our work team, but then in our real lives, how much quality time do we actually spend with friends or family? I think a lot of people do it well, and balance both media/work and real life together. But as a whole though, I think we fall short. A lot of us get pulled in so many different directions just by existing in this culture. We get pulled in so many different directions that we get stretched too thin. Between school, sports, career, entertainment, family, health, and so on with the millions of distractions we have at our disposal, there’s just not enough time in the day to do everything. So, what do you value? Which distractions do you choose to put your attention on?
So here we are, with low attention spans and we feel burnt out. They say it’s adulthood… I say it’s culture. There are adults who live outside the cultural norms, and they seem to have better balance and happiness. The rest of us though living inside the cultural norm, we love working over connecting. We value networking over family time. We want nice things over nice memories. To justify the lack of balance in our lives, we say things like, “there’s time for sleep when we’re old”, or “just a minute, I’ll help in a sec” and “I’ll be able to support them when I have more (insert unit of time or money here)”. We basically value monetary gains over emotional or mental gains. We choose to disconnect from ourselves, so that we can connect with this modern world. We choose to connect with this modern world so that we can live fast, make the most possible money, and then hopefully not die young. I just don’t know if I can get behind that! I totally realize that lots of us will have to stay in that mode. It’s just how life works for some of us. For some others though, we choose to go against the grain and find the balance that brings us actual happiness.
I make music everyday so that if I were to die today, I’d be happy. I try to find balance in my life so that I can have the most energy to do what I love to do. I definitely don’t have balance all of the time because I get obsessed with music. I fall victim to the grind mindset, and I also spend countless hours scrolling and watching videos. I love working hard, and I love YouTube videos, but if it’s not balanced than I forget that I love being able to be physically active and I love quality time too! I’m just saying that I see the pattern of burn out in our culture. I want to try and change that and its the holiday spirit that is getting my mind in this head space. The culture we live has rubbed off on me and I don’t like that! I want to be valuing the holiday spirit year-round and I hope that you will join me!
Happy holidays and thank you for joining me on this wild ride.
Until next time,
Dossas
