I’m back at the Rocky Mountain Song School. There’s something magical about this place; I arrived and let out a breath I didn’t know I was holding. I suspect there will be a bunch of blog posts as I try to process, and hang onto, everything I’m learning here. For the first session I went to one about Making a Wholehearted Music Career, with Terri and Ellis Delaney, and Val Denn. My music career has been nothing if not halfhearted lately, and I thought it might be a way to sneak up on what I actually want out of my music life. It couldn’t have done a better job of that. Terri and Ellis are all about crafting a music mission, to keep you true to why you’re a musician, and to give you clarity about what it is you have to offer to the world. Especially because, as they pointed out, if you’re playing music for what it can give to you, you will necessarily be disappointed. That included some work on what our long-term (five or three years hence) goals are, and then breaking them down into concrete steps that would be done in the years between now and then to be on track to meet them. They also noted that, while you absolutely have to dream and shouldn’t be afraid to dream big, dreams are inherently problematic because by definition they are about things that you haven’t accomplished and so you’re necessarily falling short if that’s how you’re defining yourself. And also that when you’re actually performing, your job is to be fully present where you are and with what you’re delivering, and not thinking about what else you’re trying to accomplish. What you are and what you have to give needs to be enough at the moment, and you need to think about what it is that you’re giving to others that is indeed enough. We also did a set of worksheets that were about figuring out what our music mission is. We had sets of questions to answer about how the audience feels during and after a performance, and what do my core fans like most about what I do, what I enjoy most about sharing my art with others. And I was struggling a bit. My music is intellectual and complex, and I want to get people to think (and feel) differently because of it, but I was fighting with that, because it didn’t seem a legitimate thing to offer, and it seemed to professor-y, and I have a hard time figuring out how my academic life and my music life fit together. But then we moved onto the next page of the worksheet, which was all about our communities and daily lives and what energizes us and makes us whole, and what what service we provide to others when we’re at our best. As I thought about what makes me a good teacher – both inside and outside of the classroom – it came to me is that my strength is helping people genuinely understand things. Figuring out what they might not understand, and determining how to show it to them so that they come to know it; not just intellectually (and certainly not just as something they write down and spout back to me later), but viscerally. And that’s what connects my songwriting with my academic life. I show people things in songs so that they understand the world differently. Putting that all together is a huge insight and gives me a real start on figuring out a music mission and all that follows from it. The other things that page of the worksheet did for me is remind me that I’m going to be much happier if I take care of who I am and what I need rather than trying to fit into something I feel like I should be or things I think I should be doing. I realized, when answering the questions, that getting regular exercise makes a huge difference in my wellbeing (even if I rarely enjoy the first mile of the run). Doing that, alongside making an effort to eat in a healthy way, is a good form of self-care. Meanwhile, I was really proud of myself for getting myself out running this morning, before song school breakfast. Similarly, I’m not camping at Song School, which I know means I miss out on a lot of the community aspects; it feels like it’s not a legitimate way to do song school. But I also know that in addition to physical injuries that make sleeping on the ground complicated, really I’m an introvert and need to have a place to escape to, in order to be able to be happy engaging with people the rest of the time. And I’m not a night owl either – I’ll make an effort to go to some of the late night song circles, but sleep (and a potential morning run) are also key to my overall happiness. And prioritizing the things that will make me a happier person overall will make me better able to continue being a musician in the long-run.