Who am I?
My name is Rod Smith and I’m a musician / songwriter / writing enthusiast from Ireland.
* Me doing my bass thing *
I'll be mostly posting creative writing pieces, some bits about songs and my songwriting process, and maybe other random thoughts that pop into my head.
So, how did I get here?
Well, it’s a combination of two of things – Creative Writing and Crypto.
Recently, I finally started paying attention to the ‘Crypto’ section on my phone’s Revolut App, (It’s a money app over here in Ireland), investing small little bits of my ‘pocket money’.
I became fascinated watching it go up and up and up, in small but significant increments.
“Wow…” I said to my wife one evening, who at the time was busy trying to wrestle the kids to the dinner table. “I just made 40 euro on crypto since lunch time… isn’t that amazing?!”
Her blank stare should have told me that she probably didn’t give a crap about my newest ‘hobby’ at that particular time.
“Yes dear, that’s great dear”-masterfully balancing several small plates of spag bol up along her arm-“now a little help here, please?”
Oblivious to her exasperated tone, and with a big stupid grin plastered across my face, I kept staring at that small screen in my hand, repeatedly thumbing the balance button in childlike amazement, while subconsciously picking up a laughing, squirming four y/o with the other arm and plonking him down on his chair.
But that night came the reality check – after finally bribing the kids to at least pretend to go to sleep – I greedily grabbed my phone to check what new highs my crypto had reached, only to find – I was now DOWN 20 euro.
"WTF???" I spat out.
“What the hell happened… where’s my money gone!?”
In the two hours since I last checked my balance, my new found fortune had been wiped out - and even worse, 20 euros of my original investment was also gone. Of course I frantically sold the rest - I didn’t want to lose all my money after all – only to painfully watch the green chart rise up again the next morning, you guessed it, higher than it was before.
“Oh, so THIS is Crypto…”
A harsh lesson to learn, but 20 euro loss is better than 200 euro loss, which in turn is better than 2000 euro loss, but no matter, I knew from that point I was hooked. I started researching everything crypto and down one particular rabbit hole I found Hive.Blog.
“Hmmm, writing and crypto, now that’s interesting...”
And that brings me to another obsession of mine -
Songwriting.
I’ve been writing songs for the last 20 or so years, some good ones, some OK ones, a LOT of bad ones, but in the last few years I really started studying the craft of songwriting, exploring in more detail the concepts and ideas behind my songs and this is where I first discovered object writing.
* How could you not be inspired with this scenery on your doorstep! *
I’ve now read Pat Pattison’s songwriting and lyric books several times – deep diving into the senses, bringing the simplest of objects to life. I always found I wrote my best songs when I was also practicing this type of creative writing.
When I work on writing exercises, I automatically pick up on ideas and phrases that I think would work well for new songs as well – and plus when those ideas do come along, I'm already in that writing flow - so, similar to a relay race, if I'm already running when I get the idea, I find it's easier to carry that idea all the way to the finish line.
So that’s in reality why I’m here, to keep up my writing practice – as my problem is I never seem to be able to stick with it - Life gets in the way or I don’t make the time I should make for it. Typically after a while I find some excuse to not put pen to paper, or fingers to keys and my songwriting output suffers.
So I’m here for motivation, I’m here for accountability - as I know from previous attempts, if I post my work online I’m far more likely to continue posting.
But most of all, and this is the big one… I’m here for that sweeeeet 0.02 cent I could possibly make on each post if I get a like or two! :)
In fairness though, I wanted to find a community that was engaging and vibrant, that would give me that extra motivation to keep up my writing practice, which would in turn inspire my songwriting – plus I LOVE the fact that it’s all linked in with crypto technology, something I’m learning more and more about each day.
* Me doing my bass thing in a different place *
So that’s me.
I can’t wait to explore the communities more, hopefully join many of them, so if there’s any creative writing communities (I think I may have spotted some already!) or songwriting ones on here I’d love it if you let me know.
And if you’ve read this far, thank you, I appreciate that time is precious and hope you have an amazing day.
Rod
(strangegravy)
P.s. Thanks also to @lovesniper and @chillwithshanna from @ocd for the suggestion to write an intro post, hopefully I'll find my feet around here soon! :)