Today made me feel small. Today made me feel like giving up. I can't call myself a starving artist because I don't starve (I get plenty of carbs), but on a regular basis I'm made to feel ashamed to be an artist. Not by ridicule or harsh words directed at my content, but, indirectly or passive aggressively by the support network that keeps me from starving.

Despite having put, what feels like, a ton of effort into improving my craft over the last three years, I have no profit to show for it. Ultimately, this is more a failure on my part for not aggressively seeking to get my music to more people. I fell into the foolish mind-set that I might, one day, be discovered by someone or some group who would help me make all my dreams come true if I just continued to make music and play the occasional gig with my band. I probably don't deserve success in the music industry as much as some people I know, but I try to have confidence that I, as both a song-writer and an audio engineer, know enough about what I'm doing to get to a point where I at least don't feel like a failure daily.

I am 26 year old college graduate with a B.A. in English, a self-proclaimed music producer with zero paying clients, no day job, and I live with my parents. Today I handed my resume in at Taco Bell. I will probably get the job. That should feel like a good thing but, tonight, I feel only depression.

I overheard my mother talking to an old friend. When asked about how I'd been doing, my mother said, a wince of embarrassment detected, "He graduated from college and he's been playing with his music and... Well, that's about it."

I wish I felt like I'd been "playing" with music for the last two years. It's important that the creative process be spontaneous and fun, and its easy for that to be the case when you feel like your hopes and aspirations are not riding solely upon it. But when you've given up on doing anything other than pursuing your craft a different emotion overtakes you at times. I can only describe it as torturous.

Don't get me wrong, writing music is about as enjoyable as it gets, even when you feel the stakes being hammered in and you start to worry you'll never write that single or finish that body of work that gets you noticed. It's just that, as painful as creating under that condition can be, the thought of doing anything else is worse.