Maybe you suffer a little more than you ought to...

For years and years I avoided facebook like the plague, but eventually I had to join because of my day job.  In the two years that I've been using it I've realized that we wouldn't have had the chance to reach nearly as many people if it weren't for sites like facebook and ReverbNation.  Though I resisted at first, I'm not a firm believer in the positive power of social networking.  Our great friend Mark Montgomery runs a social media business and has helped us out a lot in growing our presence online, and he has a lot of cool thoughts to share on this technology at Your Social Media Guy.  Check out his blog!

As someone who used to be oblivious to social media altogether, I think it's really funny that I've written two different songs as a result of things that I saw on facebook.  Today's blog is actually about one of them - one of our newer songs called "Suffer".  Yeah, I know I write a lot of downer music.  And the title of this one makes it sound like just another depressing track from yours truly.  But, despite the name, it's actually one of my more positive, uplifting songs...inspired by all the downer things I see every day online.

You know, I see so many positive possibilities with the online world.  There are so many opportunities to share art and information with people with whom you would never come into contact otherwise.  And there are a lot of worthwhile subjects out there to be talking about.  I do think that we probably overshare online.  Sorry, but if all you had for breakfast was toast, I do not care.  Not one little bit.  That's a minor annoyance for me, having to see who all had toast for breakfast every day.  But what really gets me is when I log on to facebook or any other site and see nothing but complaints, day in and day out.

I'm a very private person about everyday things.  I don't share any kind of personal news whatsoever online.  I don't mind sending private messages on facebook, but I don't like advertising my personal business to hundreds of "friends", some of whom I've only met once or twice in real life.  It doesn't mean I don't like you all, it's just that I figure I can tell individual people what they need to know as the subjects come up naturally.  I worry that a lot of people probably think I'm a jerk for just using facebook professionally as a musician.  When I don't comment on your personal posts it doesn't mean that I don't care, it just means that I don't see the point in advertising to the world that I do care.

I do love going online and reading daily the positive things that some people have to say.  Some people are just very pleasant.  And I seem to know a lot of people with a lot of troubles who continue to put out a "glass half full" vibe.  That makes me so happy.  Then there are those people that I mentioned before, the ones that will find something to complain about every other hour, something to be over-the-top annoyed about, something to be judgmental about, something to just be negative about.  And I wonder how easy their lives must be that they can get so upset about such small things.

So I wrote this song called "Suffer".  It's about all the negativity that we surround ourselves with.  Sometimes I think it's just so that we can have something to say, when sometimes it's really okay to have nothing at all to say.  The first lines of the chorus to this song are, "The rain's gonna fall whether you like it or not, and I think maybe you suffer a little more than you ought to."  Bad things are going to happen, and lots of little bad things are going to happen every day, but it's okay to keep a positive attitude.  Isn't that what we should be putting out into the universe?  Negativity only creates more negative response.

The other aspect to "Suffer" is the idea that sometimes it seems as if we like to get ourselves stuck in that negativity.  It may be something as simple (and, in our own minds, as justified) as judging ourselves for our past mistakes.  I don't necessarily write what most would call Christian music, but my Christian faith plays a large role in my songwriting.  The idea that you can move on, be forgiven, and forgive yourself for things in the past is central to that.  Whether you share the same faith or not, I hope that's a sentiment that we can all agree on.  It's okay to put the past in the past when we try to move on and be better.

And there's always hope for a better day, just like the line in the song that says, "I can promise you there's still hope for a place to fly and room to grow."  I know that I write a lot of sad and negative music, so this one was one of my attempts at balancing the scale.  I hope that a song called "Suffer" can bring some happiness to someone who listens to it.