DEFFIE

Every one of us has a race that we have to run. For some of us, this race is chosen. For others, were thrown into the storm of competition without knowing what the hells going on.  Where Im from, the popular race to run is the race for fame. Folks from around the globe come to Los Angeles to follow their dreams, always with images of grandeur to fuel the pursuit of the seemingly impossible.

While its easy to get caught up in the noise of it all, Ive managed to sort out a lot of the struggles with being an artist by struggling with my friends. From the moment I left home to pursue this, I knew it would be hard fought to do it without some homies by my side. From my hometown, to SoundCloud, and now with a family in web3, Ive been lucky enough to have carved out a temporary place for my friends and I in this ever-changing ecosystem we call the Music Industry. It took quite a while, but one of the clearest lessons weve taken from our experiences is this: there is no "Finish Line". There is no particular point where you should stop. Its a matter of choosing a direction, and sticking to your guns. The raceway will reveal itself as you go, but only if you decide to take a second to look back. Ill continue to press my mind until the wheels fall off, as its been an honor to have gotten this far in the race in the first place.

Finish Line #19

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Finish Line #25

So... the last time I was here, I was trying to convince myself that I wasn"t done working towards the "Finish Line". Thanks to the awesome supporters and engineers here at sound.xyz, we sold out instantly. Since then, I"ve been stretching between attempting to maintain relationships with extremely talented friends, working on heds.app, and generally keeping my head as down as possible. More recently, I"ve started to explore what it means to be a creative. When you start out your career with absolutely zero sense of infrastructure and a job title that doesn"t exist yet, it"s easy to feel overwhelmed by the stress of simply trying to survive. After 15 years of linking & building, many of my friends in the creative field struggle to find a tangible direction for them to go. I"m here to argue: there really is none. Winging it is truly the answer. Out of every decision in the creation of a record, the most exciting to me are still those "happy accidents". A knob slightly tweaked can add so much emotion, changing the direction of your process completely. That"s the beauty in creativity to me. The ability to paint with your decisions, to maximize your creative return in order to create more, to increase your footprint in the culture of your choice. Bob Ross was really onto something.