Unkinking the hose
If you have to live on a particular street, you may pay a premium for the privilege. (Image by Miguel Á. Padriñán)
Did my self-delusion waver when I was climbing up the ladder and onto the plexiglass platform in my evening dress and heels?
Or was it when I was playing the white grand piano on that plexiglass platform, suspended eight feet over the bar of a downtown Atlanta restaurant?
I think neither. I think that the entire time, I believed that the fact that I was making money playing music meant that my career was headed in the right direction.
Apparently it didn’t matter where I was playing music (on a white grand piano suspended over a bar), what I was playing (“Moon River, wider than a mile...”), for whom (random uninterested restaurant patrons), or how much I was being paid ($25/hour, plus tips). Any paid gigs meant that I was a professional musician.
And now I wonder: Why was that so important to me? Why was I so attached to that identity?
It’s interesting to think about how things might have gone differently if I had let go of that. What I most wanted to do was write songs and record them. I might have been able to fund that work more effectively by doing something totally unrelated to music. It just never even occurred to me.
It seems to me that this is not an uncommon problem among aspiring artists and entrepreneurs. We want to do the thing that lights us up, and we figure it’s even better if we can make a living doing that instead of something else. And then, so often, we get stuck in a place where we’re sort of doing it, sort of making no money at it, and sort of making money doing something similar that doesn’t satisfy us.
The pressure we put on ourselves to earn a living doing what we love creates a scenario like trying to run water through a hose with a kink in it. Pulling harder just reinforces the kink until no water is flowing.
It’s only when we go and physically unbend the hose — that is, question our assumptions — that the flow returns.
In designing our life, this would mean recognizing that there are a myriad ways to earn a living, a myriad ways to satisfy our creative impulses, and a myriad ways to develop our craft as artists.
And, importantly, we don’t have to cover all of these things at once or with one activity. In fact, it’s often better when we don’t.
My best employees — the most effective, efficient, and fun to be around — have been the ones who were pursuing second careers as creative artists at the same time as they were working for my company. They excel at their craft of singing, acting, or painting, and at business operations, teaching, or whatever they’ve been hired to do.
The fact that these superstars don’t need to pay all of their bills with their art means that they take only the gigs they want, when they want. And since their “day job” fulfills a specific purpose in their life, they know exactly what they want to get out of it. This allows them to put into it exactly what will allow them to get the desired result — and move on when they’re not getting what they want.
And that gets to the heart of it: We benefit from seeing all of the choices we have. The tighter we cling to only one option, the weaker the flow of opportunities we will be aware of. When we unkink the hose by recognizing that there is more than one path to making our dreams come true and more than one way to find fulfillment, we’ll see all kinds of possibilities for being able to get what we want out of life — with more ease and joy, too.
