no matter how hard I try.....

 I am feeling exactly the way this photo looks.

Let me preface this by saying that there are 900 million other issues in the world that are more pressing than this one is. Let me just get it out of the way that I fully understand that this is an insignificant thing to be upset or worried about.

I still would like to let myself feel these things.

It is so hard to constantly work so hard. It is so hard to pour everything you have within yourself into dedicated quotidien, exhaustive efforts into something that brings such little return. Making music, even for just the art's sake of it, has become absolutely unbearable.

Spotify, the biggest streaming platform (perhaps of all time), is updating its terms of service this week to be an even bigger nightmare than it already is for artists. It seems as thought Spotify has been on a never-ending quest to make life for artists as miserable and as impossible as possible. First they have made it so we make next to nothing from streams. We have to be on the platform, because it's the biggest one, and we can't afford to not be on it. They suppress all indie artists. If someone adds our music to an AI playlist,--even without or knowing or consent-- OUR music is removed, all whilst Spotify's own AI "bands" dominate. The new TOS, which is set to be law of the land this week, completely throws all artists on the platform to the AI lions. Unlike Daniel, the music gods of the copyright and both of the U.S. Performance Rights Organizations (PROs) do not seek to intervene, despite our faith and dedicated.

Well, that's... f👀cked! LMAO

An artist that I detest with every fiber of my mortal being will soon have more followers than me on Instagram. I know this shouldn't bother me, but it does. I know that they bought all of these followers, and I spent over a decade building my audience. I know that I am, objectively, more talented than this person, do not feel entitled to my audience, and have really made it a point to engage with them and give them what they want and need from me. I have worked so hard for everything that I have, and I have worked so hard specifically for them. I know that I do not want to be famous, and that I am not in this to be famous or play the numbers game. But it does hurt that this person who has put little to no actual effort into their own work (and who has been personally  very shitty to me) will surpass me in numbers through no actual efforts of their own. I am not jealous of their numbers. I don't need an army of bots to validate me.

But it just sucks to work SO HARD and know that no matter how HARD I work, I can never outrun or beat people with more money than me.