...ask. Be inquisitive. Always be curious to find out the how and why. These are things that were instilled upon me when I was in school to be a scientist (marine biologist). That is, of course, until I decided late in my sophomore year of college to study music instead.
Now, I find myself falling back to that analytical mode of thought in regards to figuring out what my next move should be with my music career. Up until now, I have done well for myself in regards to figuring out my goals and then moving towards them. Every 2 or 3 years I have come up with new goals and game plans, while also evaluating my current status at the time and then what tactics had worked or failed up until that point.
So far, I have accomplished every goal I had set for myself in previous planning sessions, except for performing at the Inter Media Arts Center (IMAC) in Huntington, New York. That goal will never happen now with both the closing of the IMAC and the death of Michael Rothbard, the patron of the arts that ran the concert hall. But, based upon the ground work I have managed to lay down in 2009, the large number of bookings I already have for 2010, and the types of contacts I've been recently having access to, I feel as though I'm in a very delicate point where my decisions will weigh much more heavily on the future than they ever have up until now.
There was a blog I posted back in October that I think was the genesis of my thinking at this very moment. The thoughts I had in that blog dealt with whether or not I had been looking enough into the careers of past and current jazz musicians, as well as my own, to see if there is anything I'm doing wrong or could do better to try and boast myself up to the next tier in the jazz scene and the music scene in general. My answer has come back to me that I am in deed doing something wrong. I'm not seeking enough advice from my peers or from certain contacts I have access to within the industry. These are the folks who can help me figure out what I need to do to get to where I want to be, based on where my career stands now.
I will not mention names, but there have been other artists that I've performed with that were, or currently are, in a similar "critical phase" of their career where making certain decisions could mean elevating their careers or just maintaining the status-quo. I can remember thinking to myself that they needed to seek some advice, or at least listen to the advice that they were given by their peers and qualified people who understood where their careers were at. Now, I'm thinking that I should heed those thoughts I had.
One of the important things that we (those artists and myself) all have in common is that we are all used to having to do absolutely everything ourselves and find it difficult to give up control or even delegate tasks to others. The thing I DO NOT want to have in common is career stagnation. This isn't necessarily a knock against those artists or where they are in their careers now or then. I'm simply stating that they all could probably have advanced much faster and further if they had seeked advice rather than try to figure it all out themselves.
So, in sum, I believe that one of the major mistakes I'm making is not seeking enough help or advice. I work so hard at what I do that sometimes it becomes very easy to make incorrect judgements or come up with the wrong game plan because of a distorted view of a situation. Forget not seeing the forest for the trees. If you have your nose buried too close to the ground, you won't even see the trees for the grass.
As for what my next move should be, I guess I won't know for sure until I ask some trusted and knowledgeable contacts that I have for their advice and thoughts.
