Being a musician/artist means you also have to be an entrepreneur, so there are many hats we have to wear in order to successfully pursue it.  In addition to the artistic side (songwriting, arranging, bandleading, performing, etc.) you have to also run the business side (booking, promoting, networking, bookkeeping, etc.).

The other day someone told me a keen observation: when you have so many hats to wear, the #1 thing you do the best gets lost in the sea of chores.  It takes you away from what you do best, and it’s very easy for you to get burned out.

That made me remember my college-era mentor telling me another important insight.  All jobs demand life out of you.  The one you want is the one that gives it back.

That was a great insight for me, as I am able to wear many hats — and I do quite well on some and I even enjoy them.  But the question is, are all of them my Doing-Is-My-Reward activities?

No.

For example, I am an able web developer but unless I get paid or someone asks me to do it, I’ll never program anything ever again.  Sure, it’s kind of fun and I do it well, but at the end of the day, it’s still a life-sucker activity.  I don’t do it unless I have external motivations associated with it. Tolerable, sure.  More than tolerable — it’s a great job.  But is doing it rewarding by itself?  No.

And as I reflected on my career directions this fall, I came up with a number of activities/directions I could be engaging in, but it seemed like there was nothing I wanted to do unless there were external rewards attached to them.  Like this:

Activity -> Result = Reward

So if you take away the result, the activity itself isn’t rewarding.

This applies to any career but I just had to ask myself.  Is being a musician a reward on its own?  Would I still do it even if there was no pay, no recognition, no other rewards?  (As Klingons will say — “Will it bring your family HONOR?”)

I realized that ideas after ideas, they were all motivated by the proposed results they would bring in.  Like blogging or establishing an online business or even gigging.  I have to admit, I’m not one of those guys who would still enjoy performing even if there wasn’t any attentive audience — like playing some background music at a party or a restaurant.  Sure, you can turn heads if you can put in some soul-stirring performance — but that’s really not me.  I need the support and energy of attentive audience in order to enjoy performing.

So after I nixed away all the activities, it seemed like there wasn’t anything left after that.  I felt empty and hopeless, like I didn’t have any reason to get out of bed.

Then one day I happened to listen to my own first album.  And it hit me like a ten-ton hammer.  I love realizing my musical vision. By that, I mean I love not only writing new songs, but arranging them and recording them, so that my songs are completely realized to their full potential.  For a while I considered releasing videos of myself playing my songs in my studio and/or hitting some open-mic circuits that to get out and play, but they weren’t exactly motivating to me.  This is why — because just singing by myself with my acoustic guitar isn’t really enough to make my songs come alive.  I want to hear my songs with all the instruments and layering necessary, so that they are as good as I knew they could be.

Now, that is an activity where doing it is its own reward for me.  Finally, I nailed down the thing where:

Activity = Reward

is true.  No need for external results here.  I will write songs and record them because that’s fun and rewarding all by itself. I don’t need anybody to pay me or ask me to do it.

Having discovered this, I am now giving myself permission to focus all my available resources and efforts primarily into that one activity.  This is not a business plan or a career move — some may think it’s suicidal, as I’ll be ditching most promotional activities — but this is what I must do.  Shed all the extras and just focus on the life-giving activity.

It feels to me like I was a vehicle that requires a very specific type of fuel, and for so long I made myself run with fuel that had so much additive and dilution that I really wasn’t able to run long nor fast.  But even just a little spoon of the pure and exact fuel type I needed — and now I can really go.  The difference is night and day.

Finally, I feel alive — and am glad to be.  I’m getting started.