How to recover from being a tortured musician (particularly one whose career has totally failed to materialise)

1) Accept the situation you are in.

2) No, really, accept the situation you are in.  (Not the fantasy one in your head.)

3) Go through lots of therapy of all different kinds including CBT, psychotherapy, visiting a psychologist (like, for fun!) and working through a 12 step programme...in order to ACCEPT the f**king situation you are in!

4) Ask yourself what things you can enjoy right this minute such as, wouldn't if be nicer if I had a cup of chai tea and a piece of cake right now? Go get 'em.  And enjoy every delicious second of having them.  Live in this 'moment to moment' appreciation of everything, even if you're stuck in a traffic jam.  (Being stuck in a traffic jam gives you longer to enjoy listening to your favourite silly pop songs, right?)

5) Remind yourself of things you used to enjoy before music screwed everything up.  Painting?  Do some.  Writing?  Start a blog.  Dressing like a mad eccentric?  Put that pink lipstick on with that green and black striped top right now and don't forget the peacock feather earrings.  Or the tartan green and black shoes that you got for $9 on the Lower East Side.  

Work it!

6) Learn new stuff.  Such as a new language, a new profession, how to make a website, how to make interesting and informative videos, how to act in films (and then go and act in some) and if possible, find a way to make some money from it somehow.  Even if just by raising your rates because of this new-found extra skill.  (Or by putting a donate button on your website.  Not that I'm implying anything by that...)

7) Remind yourself of the kind hand of fate inherent in failing in obscurity rather than in public.  People like Britney Spears, Angus Deayton and Jacqui Smith had to do so in full tabloid splendour.  Be grateful you weren't one of them.

8) Change direction entirely with a new career.  Catherine Zeta-Jones tried a singing career (Remember? No, neither does anyone else) and was just dull.  But that didn't stop her, did it?  Al Gore certainly didn't sit at home sulking about losing the presidency even if he should have won, but got right on with another project.  Turn it around.

9) Listen to Kylie's "Things Can Only Get Better" as your pick-me-up song and, preferably do aerobics to it too, because working out will keep you strong and healthy and you'll need to be both if you want a second shot at things.  And leaping about to this feel-good pop track can only enhance the exercise endorphins.  In anycase, being fit makes you feel TONNES better because you can punch the air and do spectacular high-kicks like a 9 year old without instantly having to lie down.  Which is more than you can say for most [insert your own age here] year olds.

10) Watch Ab Fab episodes.  Repeatedly.   

If ever there were comfort in the schadenfreude of watching other total losers, it has to be multiplied by 100 in watching the characters Jennifer Saunders can create.  (And it always comes in handy to know a line or two that you can trot out at parties in a pitch-perfect Edina impression, such as, "Within the law?  Within the law?  Well what on EARTH is the point of having an accountant if he's within the law?!")

11) Write a big fat gratitude list.  What things are you really glad you have in your life?  (I.e. if it were taken away you'd really miss it.)  Note down everything you can think of including the little things such as that big fluffy cushion you love having on your bed, 

or having a gas cooker you can froth up milk for your coffee on, or the fact that you've only been doing Pilates for two weeks and already you've built up the stamina to get through the whole workout because you are pretty super-fit, actually.

12) Watch the first Sex and the City film and remind yourself of the affluent fantasy that everyone was happy to buy into in 2008, right before the financial crisis of the century started and know that even the highest paid, most effortlessly rewarded people on the planet (i.e. bankers and economists) get it spectacularly wrong at times, and hey, you haven't done so badly in comparison.  Alternatively, if you can't bear SATC (and who'd blame you, really) watch the Dutch film, 'Antonia's Line' and see how the ups and downs, tragedies and triumphs of life are all part of a much bigger picture.  [Favourite lines:  Genius kid: "Grandma, isn't it sad that nothing really exists?"  Grandmother: "That's why there's so much."...]

Finally, resort to the age-old British answer to everything and make yourself a cup of tea.  

And then get on with your life.

Take a look inside my heart

I made a new playlist for my iPod the other day.  I just needed something a bit upbeat and at the same time soothing, so I threw a few possibles at iTunes and then edited it down.  I ended up with quite a mixture of songs, including the following:

1) Solitude Standing - Suzanne Vega  

This song sounds determined, strong and yet, equally, sad.  It has an opening reminiscent of the beginning of the "Fraggle Rock"  theme, but then turns melancholic to the same extreme extent that  "Fraggle Rock" becomes almost nauseatingly chirpy.  (Though, don't get me wrong - I love Fraggle Rock.) The cyclical bell-like keyboard loop in this song is entrancing, almost hypnotic.  And everyone knows Suzanne Vega has the most haunting voice ever.  No-one else has come close to that timbre.  It's slightly unnerving to hear a voice like that sing something so dark.  When I know things aren't right but I need to keep going anyway, this is the perfect song.

2) Dub Be Good To Me - Beats International feat. Lindy Layton 

Because cheesy songs were necessary too.  And even this one has a dark side, a sort of lazy, humid summer vibe, circa 1990.  And for a very humid summer here in Prague, it's perfect.

3) Right Here, Right Now - Fatboy Slim  

Another track with energy but also a background of melancholy.  The strings do it for me everytime.  Travelling across town on the metro today, feeling shattered and isolated, (what I really mean is lonely) this was just what I needed.  Nothing like a song called 'Right Here, Right Now' to get you to at least try to enjoy living 'in the moment'.

4) Long Summer Days - EMF 

This is a little-known album track.  Yes, I had an EMF album.  (It was called 'Schubert Dip')  I love the crazy rock guitars and pointless background noise-like samples. You can sing the bassline, probably to 'na, na, na,' because the melody itself is irritatingly insistent.  It sounds desperate, hopeless and angry.  And Mancunian.

5) Ur Train - Leila (Arab) feat. Luca Santucci  

Like a metronome, this song beats time with a childlike harpsichord sound that runs throughout the main part of the song and makes you think of being on a conveyor belt, in some kind of toy factory made by lunatics.  I don't know, it's entrancing, the lyrics are about not being able to get away from someone you left and it just epitomised my jumbled up thoughts through my 5 hours' sleep haze this morning.

6) Good Luck - Basement Jaxx

This is so unlike me.  I don't normally listen to stuff like this.  The strong R'n'B vocals, the crazy pop sounds, the shuffley, trendy drum beat.  It's so not me.  And yet...  It somehow makes me feel better that I can pretend to be normal and conform by listening to this song and having someone in mind when I do so.  Does she really sing 'good luck in your new bed'?  I think so.  And that's exactly the thought I had to deal with.  

Knowing ex-partner was not only moving to a new country and a new home, and indeed, a new bed, but that his new partner had already taken my place in his bed before I knew about it was hard to cope with.  Was it inevitable that I would then get a text from him just as I was standing on the edge of the platform in a metro station today while listening to this on headphones?  And was it also inevitable that I would burst into tears at that moment too?  I guess so.

7) All I Wanna Do - Dannii Minogue

I don't want any disdainful tutting at this choice, ok?  I think we all like a bit of cheesy, totally pop, completely nonsensical upbeat music now and then, don't we?  And just because Dannii Minogue's worn a few dodgy outfits in her time and had a bad press all-round in comparison to her sister, is it really necessary to be ashamed of occasionally listening to songs she sang on?  If so, I don't care.  This song is stupid and dreamily silly but fun and even has a bit of rock guitar thrown in at the last minute, so it can't be all bad, right?  

In anycase, it's what I used to listen to when I first discovered the feeling that there might genuinely be hope that I could actually have a second relationship in my life after the drawn-out period of the break-up of the previous one.  I'm usually a total cynic, so it was nice to indulge in something quite the opposite.  (Mind you, the, 'I may not be the innocent girl that you wanted me to be', does still make me inwardly cringe.  Didn't Britney Spears sing something similar and equally fatuous?) 

So as Dannii sings, "take a look inside my heart, tell me what you think you see," my reply about me and my 'heart', I think, would be:  a jumbled up mess of despair, confusion, grief, annoyance and somewhere deep down in a place I rarely acknowledge or admit to, a trickle of unfounded optimism.