Hey guys! This article is going to be a bit different than the rest of the posts you’ve seen so far on this blog. Today, we’re going to share some personal life updates, what we’ve been up to and where we see this blog going in the future. This past year has been one for the history books! With the Coronavirus pandemic, loss in income, personal losses, and more, it seems like we’ve had to live a decade in just one year. Needless to say, we’re anxious to see how this new year will unfold. Here’s to a livelier, healthier, and more prosperous year, heh?
We’re Expecting!
The biggest update to share today is that we’re pregnant! We’re expecting a little girl this April 2021. We’re super excited to welcome our new little bundle and are making plans and lots of changes to not only our physical set-up but also, we’re making room in our lifestyle for a little one. We have to figure out things like building a nursery which will be an interesting one since we live in a tiny house! We have to reconfigure our storage methods to make room for all the baby stuff. It’s quite funny that babies are so small, but they come with a lot of stuff! Obviously, with a new baby girl, we’ll have to revisit our live performance schedule once COVID-19 is out of the way. Honestly, I think our timing couldn’t have been better since we were already taking a break from live performances due to the pandemic.
Update 1/01/2022
Our baby girl is here. She’s 8 mos and has been a complete joy! She’s growing super fast and already has teeth! Her little personality is blossoming and it’s amazing to get to know her. Harlow (Harley for short) has brought a welcome change to our lives. For her first year, maybe two, my music will be on a brief hold. While I won’t be performing live as much, I do plan on enhancing my online presence. I want to build up my youtube channel, possibly do virtual shows, and finally publish my album. But finding the time to do all that has been a challenge.
We’ve Moved!
The other news is that we’ve moved! We moved to Eureka Springs, Ar – a small, quiet, eclectic town in the Ozark Mountains. You might remember reading about the area in this article where we interviewed a local-to-Eureka husband and wife music duo. We love Eureka because of its mountainous scenery, artsy vibes, and small-town feel. Another plus is that it’s a tourist attraction! So we’re thinking there will be lots of opportunities to perform. We’ve even performed a few places in Eureka while on tour in the past years so we’ve gotten to know the music scene just a little bit already. When will we get back into performing music regularly? That is still in question since you know, the pandemic! and also because we have a sweet little one now who we happily embrace as a new challenge to scheduling and doing music consistently.
So what does this all mean for music?
Because of the pandemic, we’ve been forced to get a bit more creative about how we earn money. We’ve been focusing a lot on developing more passive income systems. If you’re interested in learning more about passive income opportunities for musicians, see our post about that here. We’ve invested more into this blog, and we’ve each taken on creative side hustles to fill in the gaps. I’ve added more coaching time to my schedule as well as taken on more virtual assistant clients. I do graphic design and Rob has been teaching drawing classes for kids. It helps that our overhead is not huge and that’s why we stress the importance of setting up a lifestyle that supports your dreams. Financial stability involves taking a hard look at your spending in addition to looking at your income. Building wealth is not only about how much you make, but it’s about how much you spend too. That’s been our philosophy from day one and it’s paid off big time.
Watch 5 Passive Income Strategies for Musicians
At some point down the road, we plan to ease back into live performances by doing local shows in our area as well as doing short weekend tours. But we also intend to embrace this new digital normal by reclaiming our YouTube music channel, hosting online events, and putting out more music digitally. You can make a significant amount of money just by cultivating an online audience and monetizing your YouTube channel. It will take hard work and a lot of effort to do but I’ve seen enough people do it to know, it’s incredibly worth it. The beauty is that for us musicians, we don’t have to only post videos about music! There are lots of other topics and themes you can do videos on to keep your fans engaged. We’re hoping to capitalize on that since we’re going to be staying home more often than not with the new little. We’ll keep you posted on how that goes.
What about the blog?
Our passion and mission with this blog have not changed. We still intend on sharing insights from our experiences with you, building a community of like-minded artists, offering music coaching, hacks, and music career tools, and just being an encouraging voice for musicians to get inspired and equipped to advance their careers. In the future, we’d like to host webinars and challenges to provide even more support to the community. We’d also like to bring in experts like public relations and marketing professionals, booking agents, industry executives, and media representatives to share insider tips on how to make waves with your own movement and get more attention. We’ll be updating you on this as we move forward, so if you’re not signed up to our mailing list, get on it.
We also will be looking for more guest writers. If you are interested in writing for The Crafty Musician, get in touch.
We’re excited about what 2021 will bring. Last year was difficult, but we’re optimistic that things are going to start looking up. 2020 taught us how to utilize and incorporate virtual methods into our business. I think the chances of these facets as a means to produce more income will stick around long past the pandemic.
As artists, we’re no strangers to change. In fact, most of the time we’re at the helm of it. Even though changes arise, being creative and finding ways to integrate these changes to build something even better is what we all strive for. Rob and I are incredibly grateful to be where we are and looking forward to this next chapter in our lives. Thank you and shout out to the folks in this community for coming along with us throughout these past 5 years. Here’s to many more.
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Hello, Anitra!
I’ve just read your post here. It’s funny that I wondered to myself whether a bundle of joy would be part of the news and it was! Many congratulations to you and Rob!
Eureka Springs looks lovely and set in some beautiful countryside.
The best of luck with all your endeavours.
Bonne continuation, as they say over here!
Astra.
Hi Astra! Thanks so much for the congrats! We are overjoyed. Thanks for the well wishes and best of luck to you as well. I hope you are doing well. Take care.