The feeling is what matters

If you miss this ferry, you can catch the next one. But not everything in life is like that, is it? (Image by Deborah Jackson)

Off and on, I experience a sense of being unfulfilled.

I know exactly where it comes from, too. I’m not playing enough music.

For years, I played open mics and in bands. I started a music school and played and taught music for hours every day. Then I played music with the students of The Little Middle School every morning, everything from Lead Belly to The Magnetic Fields.

And for around eighteen months now, there’s been very little music in my life. I’ve missed it. However, I already had a sense that I was not living up to my potential as a musician and music educator. At the moment when the pandemic hit in March 2020, I experienced an unexpected and distinct pang of regret, in addition to the general sadness and grief and anxiety that dominated my waking moments. I thought, “I wish I had created online resources to teach people how to play music.” It was weird. And then I proceeded to do very little about it.

That’s fine. I’ve had enough to do, both at work and at home. There’s no law that says I have to follow through on every impulse that issues from my overactive idea factory. But the feeling—the feeling is what matters. The feeling is telling me that I am going to do this thing. It will not let me go until I do. In moments of quiet—in days that, like this one, are not filled with busyness—I will feel this feeling all the more intensely.

Ever had a feeling like that? How annoying. My car dings when you put it in gear and haven’t fastened your seatbelt, and it will keep dinging until the seatbelt clicks. This the same thing.

I took some time the other day and asked myself what would be enough to make the metaphorical seatbelt-dinger in my head stop dinging. The answer came readily: Play a bit of music every day. Write a song every week or so. Learn how to play some new songs. Start making videos and other content and sharing it online on a regular schedule.

Well, okay. I guess I can do that.

I’d like to offer some grand pronouncement about what this all means and how it can help you, too. However, I don’t have a whole lot of perspective on that yet. It’s a story that might not make sense until later.

That said, a few years ago, I had a nagging sense of discontent because I wasn’t sharing my ideas. I started this blog as a result. Not only did I feel intense relief to start writing and publishing, it changed my life. Maybe this music thing will be similar.

Maybe your thing will be similar, too: You’ll go from a neurotic preoccupation with a particular hypothetical project to actively, meaningfully pursuing it. You’ll experience more joy in your days and sleep better at night. You’ll feel like you’re finally following through on what you’ve known and understood for years.

I may not make a dime from this music thing or attract much of an audience for it. That’s okay. I might do it for a year and then move on to another project that emerges as a result of what I learned from this one, or I might continue for decades to come. Either way, I will make the decision based on the feeling, however irrational, inconvenient, or annoying it may be. I have come to trust the feeling, and I’m interested to see where it takes me.

Do you have a feeling that you persistently ignore, put off, bury, or suppress like I do? What would happen if you acted on it instead?