• Time: how much time do you take to read articles, news and forum posts? Do you just inhale them or do you read them properly? I normally hoover up online articles but in recent months (since I was in Sicily and decided to be a bit more aware of stuff I was “consuming” – like music and hobby) I’ve started buying a paper magazine every now and again.

I like to take time out, to say to myself “have an hour and just read this and take your time; have a coffee – maybe go mad and a piece of cake to go with it. Enjoy yourself, take some time to yourself, and have a little read about stuff you like”. I find this really helpful to “read properly” and not just cram in a couple of articles inbetween Zoom meetings for work, which I immediately forget about.

• Money: adjusting hobby budget. Do you set aside a fixed amount of money each month for your hobby or do you just “buy whatever pleases you”? I’ve always just bought as I go along – as long as I could afford it at the time. I’m not very good at making pots of money for different things, as I always end up robbing Peter to pay Paul. The idea that I’d put x aside one month and doing so means I can’t get my van MOT’d that month? That doesn’t make sense to me – money is to be spent, so I spend it freely!

Hobby spending is way down on my list of priorities – if there’s money to spare, after all the important stuff is covered, I’ll gladly spend it on what makes me happy. But I don’t budget a specific amount; if I’ve had a “heavy month” with lots of £££ on hobby one month, I’ll probably not spend so much the following month – but there’s no budget.

• Mental state: Have ever stopped giving money to some creative person (patreon, ko-fi or similar) because you needed to adjust your spending and how did it feel? Yep, quite a few times. I’ve supported *a lot* of people on Patreon. Sometimes I keep the payment going to genuinely support them, sometimes it’s just to get a specific reward or see a particular thing created, then I’ll drop out and move onto something else.

I’ve never felt particularly bad about stopping supporting someone. But that’s maybe because I support lots of people currently. I give my mum a good few hundred quid a month so she doesn’t have to worry about putting the heating on in the winter, and there’s still a bit left if she wants to go out for lunch with her friends. I give about the same to my little sister who is on a zero-hours, minimum wage contract but a full rent to pay every month. I give to a few charities and support a few of the homeless in my local area. Then there’s the patreon musicians and miniature STL creators – my monthly pay cheque gets spread between a lot of us!

I’m very lucky to (currently) be employed with a well-paid job. But that could disappear overnight – so while I have the money, I share it around. There’s never anything left at the end of a month. But I support who I can, when I can – sometimes I can’t, but I’m not going to feel bad about it! (and I don’t think anyone else should too).

Here’s this week’s music. Yep, it’s another tune I’m taking to the next jam night.
But it’s an absolute belter (there’s about six of us who can usually play most stuff off-the-cuff and this is the kind of song that has lots of room for everyone to play something impressive).