Michael Grimm: How long can he maintain the quality of his songs?

While de-cluttering recently, I came across some notes I had taken some fifteen years ago.
I can't remember where I had sourced the following from.
I only know I used to collect quotes when the quotes resonated with me.

Twenty years ago would be about the time I started to write my own songs using the few chords I knew with my guitar.
Hence I became curious about the composing process - where do the songs come from?

In my case, I would simply hear the melodies in my head or I would be dreaming them as I slept.
Either way, I would have to quickly put words to the melodies so that I could remember them easily as I cannot read music.
If I was sleeping, I would have to then force myself to get out of bed and record the melody before going back to bed so that I could expand on the song when I had rested.
If I failed to do this, I would not be able to recollect the song when I awoke and the song would be lost forever.

The note I found while I was de-cluttering said: "Great composers often compose their best works under pressure in times of adversity.
Mozart was dying in poverty when he composed in his last few weeks many immortal works.
Beethoven wrote his best works after going totally deaf.
Chopin overcame the debilitating effects of tuberculosis to write many of his finest piano pieces."

Another note said: "The very act of creating music becomes the means by which personal adversity is overcome.
Composing remain then, as now, the supreme expression of the creative genius of the human spirit to make anew that which appears for all purposes to be lost."

I don't play the guitar well.
I don't play any musical instrument well.
Except in my dreams.
In my dreams I could play and sing extremely well.
I wanted to understand in the context of the creative process,
how come my subconscious could not break through to the conscious state?
Some metaphysical people I talked to explained that I probably played the instruments well in a previous lifetime.
But why, I asked, couldn't I tap from that to use in this lifetime?
Why was I dreaming and why was I not able to literally "live the dream"?
Till today, I do not understand.

I tried working with professional musicians to further develop my music but these efforts did not succeed for lack of compatibility.
Even these musicians shake their heads in wonder at how I come up with the melodies when they have been in the business their whole lives and can't come up with a single song of their own!

No one understands the creative process (any kind of creation, not just music) unless they experience it themselves.
I have long since given up the dream of singing my own songs as I find I am not the singer I once was.
Having to express my music through others make this project even harder.
I still harbour hopes that I will one day work with the right people on my music and then I hope to share these on youtube.
This would be so much fun and would be so fulfilling.

The writer Robin Sharma said: "Potential unrealised turns to pain. The violence of mediocrity and a life poorly lived creeps up on people. It happens so quietly and ever so invisibly; and then it just tears you apart".

Back to Michael Grimm.
I understand where the singer/songwriter comes from.
I understand the pain and despair he felt when he thought he wasn't getting the recognition he deserved.
I understand why the quality of the first few albums are usually hard for the singer/songwriter to follow.

I myself have about a hundred songs.
Out of these, if I had to cut a first album, I would of course have to select the top twelve of my compositions to make sure that my first album doesn't bomb.

Then for the next two or three albums I would have to choose the next best twelve or twenty four songs, right?
After that, what's left are more or less my own rejects.
So I surmise this is the reason artists can't keep producing albums of similar quality year after year unless they accept other people's first choice material.

I also understand when the hungry years are well behind an established artist, the creative process will not be the same as it once was.
As life changes, the artist will change and his body of work will also change.
The only constant in life is change.
To expect Michael Grimm or his music not to change with the passage of time is not possible.