It’s a big mountain. (Infinitely bigger than the mole hill of the known)
Working day in and day out it’s easy to think that the only things going on are the things you yourself are aware of.
But lot of the unknown things in the mountain of unknown things are in favor of you. And they’re getting closer. Not all of them will make it to you and most of them you’ll never know about.
But some of them will make it to you. And when they do you’ll wonder how they ever happened…when the truth is they’ve already started, they’re already happening. They’re simply unknown to you right now.
We want the thing we’re working on to be really good but we don’t want it to be the climax of our career.
We want it to go really well, but not too well to where when it’s over we’re past our prime, past the best days.
See, since we were babies, in every movie and book the climax is at the end.
The phrase is ‘climactic ending’…not climactic middle or climactic beginning.
So when you do knock it out of the park, two voices speak up…
1. This trajectory of success will last forever, getting bigger and better all the time just like it is right now. I’ll have hit after hit and then I’ll have my biggest hit while laying on my death bed. A perfectly timed climactic ending.
2. Uh oh, what if I can never follow this up. What if this was the climax and now what is the purpose of rest of my life if I’ve already had my biggest moment.
At some point your career is going to climax. And when it does and you realize it has, that’s when you learn in a new profound way that life ain’t like the movies.
It’s actually better and richer.
In real life you don’t get to choose where the climax goes. But you do get to write what goes after.
***Ok so what to do with the two voices:
Voice number one: It’s not going to go like that. But it sure is fun ride that momentum when you have it, so ride it up.
Voice number two: At some point you won’t have the follow up. So it’s worth starting now defining your purpose apart from your level of success.
I’ve had the baby talk with countless musicians over the years and while everyone has their own way of saying it, most artists and musicians are simply afraid that having a baby will ruin their career.
It won’t.
If you want babies, have them. If you don’t want them, that’s great too.
But don’t put it off because you think it’ll be better timing after a tour or an album cycle or a certain level of success. Those are just excuses.
You’re afraid and that’s ok. Now get on with it.
***In full disclosure, I too was scared for a long time. It sounded like this, ‘I need to be ready first’. But could never define ‘ready’. And then I realized that readiness had nothing to do with it…willingness was what I needed.
You can think of any band or artist and their music and in just a few words describe them accurately and concisely.
Until you get to yourself. That thing YOU do is hard for you to see.
When you’re asked what you do it’s a long wandering list and you can’t be put in a box or be limited by anything, and it’s a cross between this and that with a little bit of this other thing sometimes…yada yada yada
And yet just like you can easily describe others, others can easily describe you.
And everyone is right.
You can’t describe you. Not because you’re indescribable, but because you’re not seeing the simplicity of how everyone else experiences you.
