The thing that will not let you go

The Star Trek crew is always encountering threats that turn out to be misunderstood life forms trying to satisfy universal desires. I can relate. (Image by Kishore Chandra Das)

I have bounced back from closing one of my businesses this past spring.

I’ve got two. One is run capably by Jen and doesn’t require a lot of work on my part.

The other is run by me and requires my daily effort.

You would think that would be enough. But there’s another one lurking in the shadows, and it won’t go away.

I know I’m not the only one. Maybe of my clients suffer from this same irritating phenomenon: The unnecessary creative project or business concept that is constantly present in the back of your mind, like a nagging sense that you need to take your vitamins or make a phone call.

Only instead of, “Be sure to do this before you go to bed,” it’s saying something more like, “Be sure to do this before you die.”

You can try to let it go, and maybe you already have, repeatedly. But it will not let you go. You’re stuck with it until you do something about it.

Sometimes the thing is amorphous, and sometimes it’s more well-defined. Maybe you’ve worked it out in painstaking detail.

Whatever it is, it’s going to keep bothering you, perhaps getting noisier and noisier as you go about your days doing the things you’ve already committed to.

I’ll tell you what mine is (I probably already have; I’ve probably already written about a dozen times). I want to make music.

Specifically, lately, the call seems to be: “Teach people how to play music by ear.”

The fact that I spent over a decade doing this full time in the context of private lessons seems to be irrelevant to this entity within my psyche that is relentlessly advocating for me to do it on a larger scale.

This entity — let’s call it the calling — also doesn’t care that I already have a _de facto_ job as well as plans for my personal life.

This phenomenon is annoying, but also strangely comforting. I will never be bored. I’ll always have something to keep me going.

And maybe that’s why this calling has lived in the realm of a noisy inner voice instead of reality for more than a decade: If I finally do what it’s asking me to do, then what? I might be afraid of lacking a purpose and having nothing to drive me anymore.

Or maybe the reason is more banal: I prefer to do work I get paid for.

In any case, I’m paying attention. I’m listening. Sometimes that’s all that’s needed by the impatient voice that’s been repeatedly calling your name.

Of course, I may not get off so easily. So I’ve been thinking: What is the minimum course of action that would allow me to satisfy my calling and get this monkey off my back?

And along with that, I’m asking myself how I can streamline my existing projects and responsibilities to make space.

I don’t know where it’s going to go, which is always the difficult part. I have tried to logic my way out of it, pointing to my consulting work as much more lucrative than, say, writing curricula for music instruction. But the calling isn’t having it. It’s sick of my excuses and deferrals.

I have to say, I understand. I started (and never finished or published) a guitar book nineteen years ago. Nineteen years! Hello. No wonder. That’s a heck of a gestation period.

I have moderate expectations. I’m not necessarily expecting to build a business out of this thing. But I’m going to give it a shot anyway, because I can’t not.

If you’re in a similar situation, I sympathize and empathize. I hope you can find a way to follow your calling, no matter how quietly and unobtrusively.

And if it wants to be big — and sometimes, it does — I hope you can find the resources and support to make it happen. I get it. I’ll be rooting for you.