JAKARTA — Making music finally became a liberating routine rather than a waiting game for inspiration. That was the experience of an essayist who, in the summer of 2020, took a full three-month sabbatical to finish an album — and came home with a new way of working that convinced him he could make as many albums as he wanted without ever quitting his day job.
Writing for The Verge, he recounted a long journey as a music maker that started back in 2005. Yet for years, he released only one debut album — a work he described as born from the “innocence and ignorance” of his youth. Beyond that, about two dozen songs got finished at various points, but none ever felt strong enough to shape into a complete record.
What changed came down to something deceptively simple: time. Lots of it. And the slow pressure of a deadline that gradually rewired how he thought about the creative process.
Music stopped being about waiting for a spark
During the first two months of that long sabbatical, he spent roughly 10 hours a day focused solely on music. He watched tutorials, sharpened his technique, and assembled around 10 new songs. From that grind, he realized his core problem wasn’t a lack of talent. It was a way of working that hinged entirely on special moments.
“Writing a song always felt like a special achievement,” he wrote. “Something that only happened if the stars aligned.”
That line matters. A lot of people with creative hobbies fall into exactly the same trap: waiting for the right mood, the right inspiration, the right atmosphere. The result? Few finished works, and a process that feels agonizing every time it restarts from zero.
He found instead that a more boring, regular, and “professional” approach produced far more music. Not because of sudden inspiration, but because he forced himself to show up — every single day.
Small work, repeated endlessly
The biggest shift came when he started working with other musicians. In September 2020, as his remaining sabbatical days dwindled, he joined several small online techno producer communities. Nearly everyone was stuck at home. People were bored, anxious, and channeling their energy into hobbies.
Collaborations just flowed. One unfinished track became five. Then 10. Then 15. A single morning session could generate 10 usable loops. By afternoon, a mixdown had to be ready because someone else was waiting. His inbox filled with new sketches and follow-up requests.
Music transformed into a series of small “tasks.” He deliberately used the word chores — the kind of mechanical, unglamorous work you just get done. For him, that term was more honest than calling everything a grand “creative process.”
“There’s nothing special about these tasks,” he wrote. “They’re pretty mechanical.”
And that was exactly the point. If a session felt dull, it wasn’t failure. If an idea stalled, he moved to the next task. If nothing felt exciting, he rested and went for a bike ride. There was rhythm. There were breaks. There were habits.
When great results come from terrible sessions
Over time, he started finishing one, then two, then three songs a day without quite realizing it. Most sessions blurred together. Many audio files got throwaway names like “jam a02 idea 5” before he eventually built a proper naming system to keep 200 techno tracks from becoming an impossible tangle.
At this point, the sharpest lesson surfaced: the value of an idea isn’t always visible the moment it’s born. Sometimes only later, once the material has piled up, does a fragment reveal itself as worth keeping. Sometimes the opposite — something that once felt significant turns out to be ordinary.
He wrote that there’s no clear relationship between how satisfied he feels during a session and how compelling the final result turns out to be. Some of his favorite music came from his most frustrating sessions. The magical moment when a great song arrives fully formed in one night? That almost never happened.
This resonates far beyond music — for anyone who makes content, writes songs, designs, or builds digital work. The lesson is simple but blunt: great work rarely comes from romanticizing the process. It comes more often from disciplined repetition, from files organized properly, from deciding to keep going even when the current result doesn’t feel satisfying yet.
What this means for any creative worker
The essayist concluded that he needed to make himself “immune” before he could get good. Not numb — just familiar enough with repetitive work that the awkwardness, fear, and over-reliance on inspiration started to fade.
Had he kept making one song occasionally on weekends, he likely would never have reached that awareness. He needed to live like a full-time musician, even if at first he was only pretending. “I had to fake it to make it,” he wrote.
For the creative industry broadly, this idea carries real weight. Many people assume creativity is born from rare, intensely emotional moments. But behind work that sounds spontaneous, there’s usually a long routine that often feels flat. In Indonesia, this logic is already familiar to bedroom producers, beatmakers, songwriters, and podcasters who build their catalogs slowly, piece by piece.
He now sees finishing a track as work that gets done and then let go. The weight disappears. But the music stays. And that’s what makes him happy.
“I couldn’t be happier,” he wrote. “The labor fades quickly, but the music lasts forever.”
His final message is clear enough. For some people, music feels like a calling. But to reach that point, sometimes you have to treat it like a daily chore first. Not to kill the art — but to let it live longer.
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