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How We Spend Our Days - Thoughts on Ambition

    I thought that the older I got the more I would know what I want in life, but it seems as time passes and I am more aware of the plethora of options available to me, I am less and less attached to any one vocation. Each day I fall out of love with my old ideas of success and fall more in love with the world.

    The other night I went to a concert at a small venue in Nashville to see one of my favorite artists, and after staying at the venue until midnight to help count merch and clean up, I listened to the band chat animatedly about getting waffles afterward and how they’re looking forward to the next stop of tour. I thought about how draining the cycle of performing is, how I like to listen more than I speak and how I like to be in bed by 11pm, and how maybe this isn’t what I really want. I know I can fit any career to my personality type--I can make being an introvert work with being an entertainer, but lately I’ve discovered the heart behind my ambitions: to communicate. I don’t know how passionate I am about music and performing… I feel guilty for not wanting to talk about it as much as my peers or for not wanting to book shows. But I do know that I love creating. I love telling stories or giving a voice to emotions. I love sharing my experience of the world, because however inconsequential it may be, there is always someone out there who needs to hear it. Maybe being a touring artist doesn’t need to be at the forefront of my life. Maybe happiness is found more abundant in doing it all: writing songs, journaling, directing videos, photography, all working with my introversion instead of working against it.

    But I love hearing others’ stories as much as I love telling my own. Productivity in the classic sense does not arise here, but as John Green once said, “A lot of times the work that people see as productive uses of my life is not what I actually experience to be productive uses of my life…. What is economically or even socially productive is not what is deeply personally productive.” Sometimes the most important work is in merely thinking, or merely being. Listening to others stories, listening to the wind in the trees and the leaves crunch on the earth, learning about how the world works outside of my eyes. 

    This communication, this raw form of experiencing the world is what I love more than music itself. Songwriting might be my favorite form of communicating, but I am in no way limited to it. So maybe I don’t want to be a full-time touring artist as much as I thought, and I’m not sure what job title would match a songwriter-artist-writer-photographer-videographer-journalist, but maybe I’ll create my own.

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