I’m Blogging. It’s on the Schedule.

In case you don’t know, Erica is the actual brains of our little operation. I (Chad) was blessed with plenty of drive, plenty of ambition, plenty of creativity, some musical talent, and lots of good luck.

Erica has all of these things, but with one little bonus: She’s not a knucklehead.

One of the messages over the weekend we spent at the Taxi Road Rally, was that if you want to be successful in this business, you have to be organized. Like hyper organized. Like your friends stop liking you organized. I think the “Rock and Roll” lifestyle is a myth, really, or at least an exaggeration from a bygone era. I think artists in 2008 and beyond are like little CEOS rather than carefree hedonists.

So, we sat down this past week and tried to get overly aggressive with our scheduling. We made a list of all the things we needed to do, all the things we wanted to do, and all of the things in between. On Monday mornings, I do 2 things. From 9:30-11am, I work MySpace. From 11am to 12pm, I blog. It’s now 10:43am. I am ahead of schedule.

At noon, I am supposed to take a break, get some lunch, and do something relaxing, because I’m supposed to be coordinating our live shows from 2:00-5:00pm. At 5, I am supposed to back away from the computer, go hang out with my kids, go for a jog, and be a human being instead of a promotional machine.

Some of you, especially those of you who might know me as a person who greatly values improvisation and living in the moment, might think that I dislike this new arrangement, but I can assure you that nothing is further from the truth. I think I remember blogging here some months back about “Reaching into the void.” The tyranny of the blank slate is overwhelming to me, and in many ways, we’re back at a moment of the blank slate. The record is done, we like it, people are responding to it, and now the task at hand is simply getting it in front of as many of you as possible.

Which… we don’t know how to do.

But… we’re listening and learning, quickly.

With a schedule, I don’t have to face the tyranny of the blank slate. The discipline in maintaining a schedule means that I can make fewer decisions about my time. My day is blocked out for me, and all I have to do is follow directions. This is liberating, rather than constricting me. I will go to bed tonight with some assurance that I did what I needed to do for The Dailies today.

That is a good feeling. This thing is not built overnight. There is no overnight success. This will be built one day at a time, one email, one blog, one conversation at a time.