markmathis

I recently bought a house – i love it! It is 100 years old with a huge front porch and a railroad track behind it. I was so excited about it – until another house showed up on the market with a similar appearance and the price was half as much as i paid.

A strange knot began to form in my stomach and worked its way up into my throat and slowly began to eat me from the inside out.

We looked at this house and the reason it was half-price became apparent. I was cool, until the same thing happened a couple months later… This time I tried to fight the feeling by giving all of my friends the address to see if they wanted it – since I couldn’t get it myself.

This feeling is called in its primitive form as, ‘jealousy’. In its more advanced stages it is called, ‘jaelousy’. A subtle difference…

I freak out when someone else gets a better deal than I got. Why is that?

I can remember when I was 15, all the guys wanted to be the center of the girls attention. If there were 5 girls in the room, we wanted every girl to be paying attention to us – even if we weren’t attracted to them or we already had a girlfriend. I suspect it was for the same reason. We couldn’t stand to be ignored while others were being paid attention to…

My friend, Aswan, is teaching me how to break this by example. He has amazing deals being offered to him by record labels, but he is bending over backwards to help others first before he jumps. He is so secure in his identity that he is helping others be secure in theirs.

Insecurity is why I get jealous. You see, it’s not about whether I get the best deal – it’s whether I get a better deal than the next guy. If I don’t know about it, then it doesn’t bother me. As long as my identity is based on comparison, I get eaten alive…

Whether it is music, money, ministry, etc… this applies. Know who you are, it is contagious, my friend.

I have people telling me what I should do with music ALL THE TIME.

“stay independent”
“go on tour”
“make another rock album”
“release your demos”
“do another worship album”
etc…

Since I am a people-pleaser, I say, “sure!”. Then I slowly sink into melancholy and don’t do anything. It is a time-tested and true fact that you can’t please everyone, and I am proof of this. Recently, I have been thinking about getting signed and bounced it off some friends. Some were receptive and some were not. I was amazed at how noone said, “Mark, it’s your deal – you need to decide”.

Everyone has an opinion and I am blessed to have people that care enough to speak into my life. My wife Jessie slapped me around a bit and told me, “You can’t let this rob you of your happiness, people are always going to have an opinion. it’s just an opinion…”. This is dog simple, but it is true. Don’t let other peoples opinions about what you should be doing take the wind out of your sails and rob you of purpose.

do what you love and love what you do. the rest is just details.

mark

i have a problem with size – or maybe my perception of it. what was fine for me a year ago is not anymore. what was big then is small now and i am learning to handle both big and small in the same space. this is the hardest mental exercise that i have ever done, being diligent and faithful with the small and totally overwhelmed with the big. it would be like chris martin going around doing shows for 5 people in little coffeehouses and then being expected to perform for 5000 the next night. one of the shows is going to suffer – because big and small do not require the same from us. the performance for 5 is much different than for 5000, because performing for 5 suggests that noone knows who you are. I know people that are good at one of these but not both, i would be interested in hearing from people who can balance these.
they say in the music industry that you have to play each show the same whether it’s big or small, but i think that’s only partly true. maybe the problem comes in when people who are supposed to be small try and go big or vice-versa? am i always supposed to go big or go home, or is that just what culture tells me. i have some friends in europe that are impressed/disgusted with america because EVERYTHING we do is big. big cars, food portions, money, houses, etc… may i suggest that there is no reason to go to cosco to buy stuff if you are a single person with a cat? is that heresy?
still as petty says, ‘running down a dream – never would come to me’. sometimes you do have to run it down and search that path out. when i come to the end of mine, i want to be like paul, ‘content in plenty and in want’.
i do want to go big, though. god, i want to go big.