Hitting Pause and Getting the Water Boiling Again

I’ve hit pause on a lot of projects, and I don’t often pick them up again. Typically, something bright and shiny and new has replaced it by the time I get back around to them, so I feel like returning to a paused–now becoming abandoned project–is a kind of regression. I also generally feel some amount of guilt about leaving behind an idea or project I had previously been excited about, in which I’d previously invested at least some emotional capital if not also time and money. But it’s easy to distract myself from that guilt, because hey, this new project needs some love, too, and I redirect my energy. Net result, there aren’t too many creative artifacts I can point to and say I did that thing.

This is kind of a meta moment here, because we’re talking about pausing projects and I’m thinking about two layers: the podcast itself, which was quietly moved to the backburner during a period of time that Trauman and I both had responsibilities and related issues that truly required our focus. Simultaneously, as I mentioned in previous episodes, I’ve stepped away from the project I declared I was “absolutely going to complete” in the first minutes of our first episode. I even boldly explained how “this one is different” and that there was no way I wouldn’t finish it.

That’s embarrassing.

As I started thinking more about the guilt part of this, I realized it is actually embarrassment, not guilt. Once again, as I’m unpacking things, I discover that this negative emotion is driven by how I imagine I’m perceived by others. I like to talk about what I’m excited about, and I have so frequently told people what I’m working on only to abandon it and have them at some point ask me how that’s going. My response is always something like “Well, that’s on hold, but listen to this new idea!” Searching my feelings here, I realize that I don’t really feel guilty or beholden to those ideas–just embarrassed that people think I’m a perennial non-completionist. Hmm.

Something that recently clicked for me is noticing how I have put pressure on myself to the point of losing my joy by declaring some external indicator as a goal (e.g. making an album). Sometimes these goals are big and audacious and intimidating (I guess I love the idea of accomplishing a big challenge), so much so that they eclipse the point of doing what I love. I say I love making music; I don’t say I love making albums. I’ve only really done that once. I’d love to do it again, absolutely. But the album I made in 1995 was the somewhat inevitable result of having some 20 or so songs ready to go, frequent access to and control of a legit recording studio, young bandmates who could survive on junk food, and again, no shortage of material to work with. And, to put it bluntly, we weren’t very scrutinizing. The album we made was pretty slapdash in retrospect. But it was authentic, or as authentic as we knew how to be. Maybe earnest is a better word.

Our band didn’t form so that we could make a record–the record emerged because we lived together and performed together and toured together and wrote together. And yet, for the past several years, I’ve really clung to a few unhelpful notions:

That I have to have a tangible project in the works;

That it needs to be unique and original and impressive-sounding when I describe it;

That saying I love making music means I should ready to show people something, almost like I need to prove it;

That perhaps I’m one of the people–and really, perhaps the only person on the planet–who needs some tangible proof that I love making music, that I deserve to make music, and that I DO make music.

I spoke previously about letting go of these larger, external goals in favor of simply attending to the thing that brings me joy. I do love writing songs, even pieces of songs. I feel so alive when music and lyrics come together in a catchy chorus while I’m doing dishes, or I work out a couplet that makes me catch my breath, makes me grin, or makes me cry. It astonishes me that we have the ability to create something that moves even us, the creator. That is the thing I’ll actually never pause. That is the thing that makes me ache when I’m not doing it.

When Trauman and I needed to pause the podcast, only three episodes in, I was again, but only initially, embarrassed. Not so much with him–he was in a similar situation, and he’s also tremendously gracious and understanding, never doubting that we’d resume when our time freed up. It has, and we are. It was no big deal… As collaborators, we chatted about it, agreeing that we’d just press pause. Simple. There aren’t any stakes here. No one is harmed if we delay, or if we don’t do it at all. There was no guilt, no shame, no embarrassment between us. The embarrassment I felt was historical, in a way. Like usual, I’d told a few close friends what we were working on, and sure enough, some of them asked how the podcast was coming, and I had to say we were on a bit of break, but we would definitely get back to it. I knew we would, but I wondered if those people thought, “Yeah, that sounds like Harley.”

Part of this is recognizing the difference between a project and a passion. I’ve spent years feeling bad about pausing or abandoning projects, when instead I could have been ecstatically pursuing my passion… and from the outside, there would have appeared no difference. So I do want to change my thinking (and talking) to reflect this new perspective.

But I really DO want to make albums. I very much want to write collections of songs that work together and put out records. So there is also something in all this that I need to figure out about sticking with projects. Sigh. But maybe there’s no rush, and no stakes, and I don’t have to put the cart before the horse.

Leading up to that busy time when we paused the podcast, I traded in a few guitars and traded up to something new and much nicer than I’ve had in awhile. That’s part of what led to a ton of new music that took me away from the space rock record I had started the podcast talking about–something about a new instrument always does that for me. When things got very busy, I had less time to sit down with that music, less time to complete songs, less time to record anything. But I was still very much being inundated with musical ideas that I was (and still am) very excited about. I was worried that, as has often happened, hitting pause on making music would dry that up, and it could take a long time to get the water boiling again.

Then I thought about how easy it was to just talk with Trauman about pausing the podcast, and I sort of took a page from Elizabeth Gilbert’s Big Magic, and I had a quick, simple chat with my ideas. I imagined all these proto-songs, snippets of words and music like glowing baubles floating in the ether, circling around me to see if I might be the one to bring them into existence. I acknowledged them, and I thanked them for being there, for coming to me. I told them, “You’re a great idea, and I know there’s a lot of you. I’d love to work with you. I’m just so very busy right now. If you’re willing to stick around, I’ll be back. I’m still open for business, I just can’t take any new orders right now. But if you’ll just hang on, we can do this soon.” It felt a little silly, but there was something oddly reassuring about it. I didn’t feel guilty, or even embarrassed. If anything, I felt realistic. And committed to my passion.

Now that I’ve got regular and frequent time, I’ve returned to those songs and continued working with them. To my great delight, the moment I said, “OK, I’ve got time now,” a flood of more new song ideas came rolling in, sometimes four or five a day. There’s no album in the works, no major project. Just trying to write the songs I feel are trying to find their way through. No guilt, no shame, no embarrassment, no stakes. Just a whole lot of joy, and I think this is getting me closer to an authentic creativity than when I’m fixated on a project prematurely. Maybe someday I’ll be lucky enough to have the time and equipment that allows me to set a goal like making a record and letting that be the starting point, but I’m learning that I don’t need that to be happy and to enjoy making music.

Contributed by Harley Ferris