Don't be the one who cancels!

it says more than you think...

Sometimes we don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.

A coffee meeting isn’t always just a meeting for coffee.

For some, it’s a full day commitment.

It’s a haircut you didn’t have the money for.

It’s an hour and a half in traffic down the 101 on empty, because gas is $7.00 a gallon and the bar wasn’t busy enough last night to afford a fill up.

For some, it’s missing a Veteran’s day program at your kids school, that your wife begged you to attend…

Sometimes it even means skipping the thing that actually pays your bills…because you’ll do anything for the next connection, for the possibility to extend your career another moment.

So, you embark on the greatest journey Los Angeles has ever known…

The journey to get coffee.

Side note, I’m going to be totally honest, I am sick as fuck right now, and I wasn’t going to write this today, I’m literally hacking up a lung all over this keyboard, but I’ll try to take this somewhere. Forgive me if it goes no where, I’m basically cross eyed rn.

We have a bad habit of putting our own “personal lens” on the world. It clouds reality.

The irony is how hidden reality can be.

A songwriter called me last week, describing what was supposed to be a quick 30 minute coffee meeting, that eventually turned into a 5-hour waste of time.

When you have a good manager, they know other managers. This means doing favors sometimes, even when you don’t necessarily want to.

This means, when a manager requests a coffee meeting to see if there’s “a vibe,” instead of just having a session and writing a song, you rearrange your schedule and head 30 minutes out of town to see just how much of a vibe you can drum up…in a fucking Starbucks.

Best case scenario, a song comes from it in a week or two, and there’s your next single.

Worst case scenario, you get to the coffee shop, text the other party “hey I’m here,” and 5 minutes go by. then 10 minutes go by. You call your manager. He says wait 5 more. You wait 10 more.

At this point, the barista feels bad for you, because they think you’re waiting on a Hinge date that you’re “trying to get to know” before the love making (because you promised yourself you’d stop doing that), and now they’re just staring at you like “woww, what a fucking looooooser, you can’t even get someone to show up for coffee??? yikes dude, what an all time low, fuck.”

But alas, the other party responds…with the cringe emoji 🥴, attached to an “omg this totally slipped my mind!!! Are you still there!?!”

As you tell this story to a judge, having found the other party’s address on Google shortly after their desertion, eventually committing a double homicide (you kill the cat too), the judge finds sympathy in their heart for you, along with a 25 to life sentence.

Please let the record show, it was in fact justified (the murdering, not the cancelling).

Someone who cancels is worse than just someone who cancels. They’re someone who lacks empathy, who sees things only as they are, and not as others may be.

They’re someone who thinks they’re better off without you. They’re someone who, after enough cancelling, will eventually end up on an island alone, doing literally nothing and becoming no one.

Honor what you commit to…by committing to it.

Don’t be that person.

I promise I’ll have something of value next week, I woke up today to a Substack email of like “DONT BREAK YOUR 6 WEEK STREAK, YOU’RE IN THE TOP 10% OF ALL SUBSTACKERS” and i’m like god fucking dammit fine.

so this is all I got, please forgive me.

Long live rock n roll.

don’t cancel your shit.
-Lucas