Quarter-Life Crisis: Now What?



Kin and I celebrating my 25th Birthday



The onset of my friend, Cass', quarter birthday has caused me to reflect on my 25th year as it is coming to a close in the next few months.  This year has been hard and emotionally stressful.  However, despite all that has transpired, I can't bring myself to change anything.  These life lessons had a purpose and I hope I am doing them justice.  I am truly thankful for a loving God, family and friends that have helped me through these last several months.  I finally walked away from an aspect in my life that did nothing but hinder me and my future. It hurt like hell and to some degree it still hurts now, but nine months later, I can actually breathe again.  I can smile again.  More than anything, I see the positive over the negative majority of the time.  I didn't realize how much this toxic "thing" affected my life...

I'm finally obtaining the opportunities to indulge in my passion, my music.  I'm beginning to feel whole in my life and I'm nowhere near where I am supposed to be.  Even on a bad day, I can smile, laugh and just be joyful.

Instead of asking what's wrong people are wondering why I smile so much.  It's truly uplifting...

I'm now at the point where I am excited about life...so now what?  This is the question every other week that takes over my thought process.  I'm not really anxious or having a panic attack, but I'm just interested to see what this next chapter in my life will bring.  What is life like on the other side of 25 when you're single, no kids, no relationship, and still trying to carve your niche in this world?

Inquiring minds, or just me, would love some insight...

Music Piracy: The Fan-Musician Dilemma

Amazon Cloud Drive is your personal hard drive in the cloud. Store your music, videos, photos, and documents on Amazon's secure servers. All you need is a web browser to upload, download, and access your files from any computer.

“The end of an era…”—Wired Magazine

According to The American Lawyer, the music industry has a new threat to tackle.  Amazon, Inc., Apple, Inc. and Google, Inc. have all launched a “music-locker” service that allows music users to compile their extensive music files into one database.  This allows for access to your music anywhere at any time.  Although this creates a convenience factor for the music lover, Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) feels this is just another form of copyright infringement.

Since the start of music being recorded, piracy has been an issue. 

As technology improves and moves beyond the expectations of society, music and any other media becomes that much easier to make a copy.  I have mixed feelings about this ongoing issue with piracy.  I am very eclectic when it comes to music.  Just my iPod alone contains over 3GB of music, which amounts to almost 48 hours of playing time.  I am in love with quality music.  I cannot imagine my day without, listening to music, playing an instrument or singing a song.  Having the opportunity to compile all the music that I own (outside of my iPod) in one place is very appealing.  However, when compiling your music on a computer or memory card (phone), it does make it that much easier to “share” music with others.  This is where the mixed feelings come into play.

I am a musician and I someday hope to make my music a paid profession.  I will always be flattered and appreciative of those whom enjoy my work, but if performing and making music is going to be my livelihood, sharing music takes money out of my pocket.  Even now I sing for free, but I also have a full-time 9-5 job that takes care of my bills.  The question becomes, how do you balance being a musician and a fan?

http://www.law.com/jsp/cc/PubArticleCC.jsp?id=1202511348922&Music_Buyers_Have_Their_Heads_in_the_Cloud

https://www.amazon.com/clouddrive/learnmore

http://www.apple.com/icloud/

http://music.google.com/about/