Notes From the Road with Adam Holmes
Notes From the Road is a quieter kind of podcast from Scottish songwriter Adam Holmes.
Voice notes, stories, songs and reflections recorded from old churches, backstage rooms, trains, roads and late nights after the show.
Small observations about music, fatherhood, attention, place and what it means to stay human in a loud world.
Not self-help.
Not productivity.
Just fragments from the road.
https://enterthesanctuary.net
Notes From the Road with Adam Holmes
The Price of the Room with a View
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A few thoughts from a hotel balcony overlooking Edinburgh.
Looking across at Portobello, where I grew up, I found myself thinking about success, responsibility, fatherhood and the strange gap between the life we imagine and the person we have to become to live it.
Why do some people change and others stay stuck?
What is the real cost of getting what you want?
And why does so much of life come down to a willingness to make decisions, take responsibility and keep moving forwards even when it feels uncomfortable?
A reflection on growth, discomfort, raising a daughter and the price of the room with a view.
If this resonated with you, I've been building a quieter corner of the internet called The Sanctuary.
Good morning. I am in a five-star hotel on the top of a balcony in Edinburgh, and then it's just amazing the view here. I can see Arthur's seat, I can see right over to the to the ocean. I can see the whole of Edinburgh from here. And it's just what uh the other thing I can see as well, by the way, is Porto Bell, where I grew up. And it's just so crazy to me that I've built the success and the means to be able to decide on a whim that I can go with my daughter to an amazing hotel and just hang out. That's what we've been doing. It's just about a little bit of quality time with Rosa. Like we had such a fun night, we just came here, we went for a steak together. She is learning how to play the guitar, so I taught her a couple of cards on the guitar, which is that's all you need. That's her. She's flying. And um then we watched a movie, and now we're here in this amazing hotel. We have some friends coming over, we're gonna have breakfast together with them, and and uh man, life is good, you know, and it's good because of my willingness to grow and experience discomfort to a level where I can actually produce the results I want to produce in my life. I think many of us look at life in this kind of deterministic way. And what I mean by that is it seems like so many of us talk about our abilities, our capacity, our personality in the sense of this is how it's always been. We have a rule in my household, we never say always, and we never say never, even though right now I'm saying never. But that really is a never. We never say it in our stories about ourselves because that's what they are, they're stories. And in the last 10 years, you know, I've gone from being a very successful in a, and I'm using quotation marks here, successful musician, but miserable, not self-managed, really controlled by others. Um, and I'd put myself in that position. I'm not saying that as a victim, I just had created a version of success where other people really were pulling the reins, and I never felt comfortable with that. Um, and then it was the courage to step away from that, it was the courage to move into self-promoting my gigs and coaching people and helping people make albums and building this first foundation of success that allowed me to then take the risk of learning AI and learning uh Facebook and learning social media to a level where I was able to rebuild the gigs, but from my own management side. And this was all while being a parent to a little kid, whilst going through a separation with uh my daughter's mum, and I'm just so proud of myself for just doing the hard work that needed to be done to create a situation where in the space of a few years I've gone from survival to literally thriving on every level, and it's not free. I've been sitting here this morning thinking about the best ways I could possibly serve and create value for my audience, for the people who come and see me play, for the people who um follow me, for the people who are in the sanctuary, for the people who are in the listening room. All I think about is how to be of service, all I think about is how to give value. Because I've learned that the only way that you can get the things you want to get in your life is just being more valuable, being more considerate, being a better communicator. Communication's been a massive one for me. As someone who grew up in a chaotic, abusive household, um, eight of us in a two-bed flat, no structure, no discipline, no boundaries, no clear communication. It's one of the hardest things I've had to learn. And I've learned it through therapy, I've learned it through like a disgusting amount of failure. And uh and I really I've just made a lot of mistakes. And I will be making a lot of mistakes right now that I'm not aware of, and I'll continue to make a lot of mistakes. But um, I suppose all I want to use this moment for just now in terms of chatting to you, is just to encourage you to be brave if there's a change that you do want to make, and it just seems like that impossible change that you just can't do it. I want to encourage you to consider that that change is probably where the most important work occurs. And the way of you getting to the places that you most want to get to is by doing the work that you're most avoiding. So, like in my case, for for the longest time, being having a manager and promoters and being kind of quote-unquote looked after by the world was this double-edged sword because I was afraid, I was scared of um responsibility. But moving towards that responsibility and moving into it and embracing that responsibility actually has been the thing that has created the most fulfilling life I could possibly imagine. And it's not easy. But the reality is my life before wasn't easy, and that life um didn't feel aligned, didn't feel authentic. So if it's gonna be hard anyway, I reckon the best thing to do is um go after the things you really want to do. And by going after the things that you really want to do, what you're really doing is becoming the person who you were really supposed to be. So, like me sitting on this balcony right now, I'm a different man. The guy that wished to have been able to do this years ago could not have handled the stress and the pressure and the responsibility I currently have. That said, the future version of me right now is looking at what I'm doing right now and thinking, um, there's so much that you could be doing better and improving, right? So that's it. That's all it is. It's just uh you're in a competition with yourself, with you. Anytime that you're thinking, What are they doing, what have they said, what have they done, how does that look for me? You're not in a competition with them, and that is a distraction. Because if you actually fully go into competition with yourself, and competition's healthy, by the way, you know, a lot of people in this modern world would have you thinking it's not about competition, but competition is just a fuel, and if it's done in a healthy way, as in you're going, come on, like the way of tough love for yourself is not like uh you suck, you've ruined it, you know, it's like tough love is like, come on, and um I'm just sitting here today really letting you know that that's I'm sitting on the top of the pile of come on for five, six, seven years now, and it's looking good. Things are looking good, and I appreciate you being here, and I hope uh this has given you some ways you can kind of think about encouraging yourself.