Author: TJBRWN

It’s a well documented phenomenon that musicians have a higher rate of mental illness than the general population. In my case, I’m quite prone to depression. I actually underwent Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) therapy after pharmaceutical antidepressants didn’t seem to help because one of the theories for what was causing my malaise before we learned about CSF Leaks was that it was a byproduct of depression.

From my point of view, experiencing constant nausea and being unable to live normally made me feel like a degree of depression was sort of appropriate. Should I be happy that I lost my career and had to move back in with my parents? And felt like throwing up every minute of every day? Even now, being exuberantly happy while being a basically useless human being and still getting ridiculously debilitating migraines after being upright for a little too long seems like an unreasonable expectation.

But the TMS therapy did take most of the edge off. Being alive as I am is bearable enough. It could always be worse. But if I could press reset or just turn off this game I would very much like that. 

Unsurprisingly, my depression typically flares up under periods of duress or stress. I had major migraine episodes again over two weekends this month. Luckily they didn’t happen during the week to force me to cancel a stream, but the effects did linger into the week. There were a couple streams this month where I was just doing all I could to get through them.

My opinion is that any practice is better than no practice at all, even if I’m not practicing the things I “should” be doing to get to my goals. So, a day just playing music I like is better than playing nothing at all. If I cancel a stream, I still have to pass the time every day anyway, and I’d probably spend it playing music in some form, so might as well keep the show rolling. 

I also got news that the insurance denied coverage for my upcoming operation, so that added a significant amount of stress. First there was a scramble to see if we could appeal the denial and argue for keeping the appointment, but then the appointment itself got cancelled and now there’s a whole new slew of hoops to jump through to take the next steps.

The reason for the denial was that there are people in my state who specialize in CSF leaks, which on one hand is actually a good sign. This did not exist 5 years ago when they sent me to Stanford. I like to think that my case was part of the impetus for this, and that it validates and makes use of Dr. Carroll’s research.

On the other hand, I would very much prefer to go see the guy whose career for the past decade has been treating this condition in exceptional cases like mine, and who has been the expert overseeing my case for this whole time. But as someone with very little income, I’m basically at the mercy of what insurance will allow. And, you know, thank goodness for insurance providing any opportunity at all. 

Given the unique circumstances of my case, it’s always a question if the treatment will even be effective at all. It’s really hard to plan for the future when an operation next month could potentially solve the problem… or do nothing at all. Then that date gets cancelled, and now it’s a question of when and where and what is going to be done by who. Instead of just killing time while waiting for a miracle of modern science to occur, I’ve been trying to shift my efforts to build up opportunities that I can pursue even in my current condition.

I mean, I haven’t made it back to the beach since last month since that kind of wiped me out for a week, and then I had two weekends of pain and existential dread. But in theory, if I could make it out to the beach regularly like I have been able to do my live streams regularly, that could eventually develop into a regular “gig” at a poolside, which is my current aspiration. Every pool has chaise lounges that I can stay flat while playing, so I’m thinking there may be hope. 

I had already decided previously to pivot away from continuing to attempt to build up the channel through social media promotion. I’ve made accounts on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and BlueSky, and I hate them all. Even making YouTube Shorts is something I really don’t like to do, but it does seem to be the most effective way to grow the channel.

Speaking of, we passed 200 subscribers this month, and that’s super neat! Yay! Though I’ve kind of made a conscious decision to not care about the number, because I hate the trap of evaluating if my efforts are working based on the measurable outcomes. It seems almost completely random if a short is going to get 100 or 1000 views, and I strongly dislike letting the algorithm determine how I feel about my output. I’m still working to grow the community, I’m just not trying to make a goal of gaining X followers in the next month or whatever. 

Instead, I find that I’m really enjoying seeing regular names pop into the stream. Someone randomly asked what my stream was about, and though I stumbled over the answer at the time, it got me thinking of a good one: the stream is about making friends. If you like my music, I like you. If you like isekai or anime, that’s another plus. And if you like ukulele too, well, we’ll get along just fine. My recipe for friendship is: common interests, common place, common times. If we like the same things, we’ll have stuff to talk about and bond over. Add proximity and regular interactions, and that’s how friendship blooms.

I really hate hustle culture, especially among streamers and social media influencers. Yeah, asking for subs and likes and follows and donations will net you more of those things. But then it turns it into a transactional relationship. I’d rather not blur the line between friends and customers, at least not on the stream. Trying to spend my time on stage trying to sell stuff sounds like an awful time.

I hope to avoid trying to get money out of my audience for as long as possible. The way I want to monetize is by creating a particular product: an isekai story and accompanying ukulele album. Hopefully my friends will like it, but I’m not necessarily designing it for them in particular. Instead, I envision the people who I’m gathering in my stream to help spread the word when the time comes.

To gather more people into the stream, instead of forcing myself to use the social media I detest,  the current vision is to go play music on the beach and by pools, so that anyone who happens to pass by can connect. Then it becomes a kind of thing where you made a memory on vacation, and whenever you feel like tuning in you can see how this guy you met is doing.

I’d love to be a restaurant singer someday, but I kind of don’t see that happening if I can’t be upright. I still need to get much better at singing to reach that level too, anyway. 

I’ve been writing and composing a little bit, but I’m still pretty out of energy by the end of my daily streams. And then with malaise over the weekends, progress has been slow. But, I’m not in much of a rush anyway. That’s the best part of being a useless hikki-neet: nothing is expected of you, and nobody cares if you do nothing. It’s ok. It’ll work out in due time. Or it won’t. Who cares?