I've been producing and engineering music for bands and other folks for about ten years, but I had never released any solo material. After my Mother's passing last year, I decided to strut out my first mixtape of just five songs. I was extraordinarily nervous, as being transgender, I had assumed an entirely different tone and inflection in my voice; and rapping was something I had rarely done before.
I put it out in July of last year, and; to my surprise, the music was incredibly well-received; well-reviewed by my peers - and - to my surprise, each song on that 5-track mixtape, with no advertising, has had tens of thousands of listens on Spotify since.
The confidence increase in this was immense! My anxiety about certain integral things has certainly gone down - especially in the field of music, I second-guess myself far less often than I used to; I hit 'stop' on over-analyzing things earlier than before, amongst other tangible benefits. I've never even performed on stage and often end up with around $100-300 of revenue a month just for putting myself out there. (Which, in streaming revenue; is a shockingly large amount of streams!)
There have been serious crises in my life since my Mom's passing; I had to take leave from my work for time, but; guess what? Nobody listening to my music knew any of that. The alter ego literally just lets me go through all of that, put out music every few months, and turned out to be the healthiest outlet of my life.
It is absolutely true - it's paramount that you find your outlet and do it.