I’m a violinist. Yet often, I don’t pick up my violin for days - even weeks.
I’m a writer. Yet often, I don’t journal, or blog, or write anything.
I want to live richly. Yet often, I spend most of my hours in front of a TV or computer.

Why has been haunting me lately. I want to be happy. There are many things that bring me happiness - playing my violin, writing, exercising, reading, taking pictures. And yet so much of the time I seem to avoid those things - almost as if I’m avoiding my own happiness.

Why?

I think with all of the things I enjoy, I want them to be significant. I want to play a recital. I want to write a book. I want to be fit enough to do something with it - like run a race or go backpacking in the woods. I don’t necessarily want to practice, or write my morning pages, or do daily exercise. Those things seem so...insignificant.

At a conference a few years back, it was said to “start small and seemingly insignificant.” That phrase has stuck with me. Every word is laced with meaning.

Start - begin - take a step forward. Beginning is often the hardest step, especially when you have to begin again tomorrow. It’s sort of a homeostasis sort of thing - objects at rest tend to stay at rest.

Small - don’t seek to start with a bang. Don’t expect fireworks to go off because you have begun your work. Just do the work. I realized today - a beginning violin student doesn’t begin with the Tchaikovsky concerto. No matter how talented and diligent, they all begin with “Mississippi Hot Dog.” What is my “Mississippi Hot Dog” that I’m avoiding because it seems too small, too boring, too -

seemingly insignificant - this is my favorite phrase of the whole sentence. “Seemingly” insignificant. A student learning how to play Mississippi Hot Dog well is indeed laying the foundation for the Tchaikovsky concerto - indeed I insist on learning it in such a way that my students are prepared for Tchaikovsky. Learning Mississippi Hot Dog well is indeed significant, but sometimes it doesn’t seem like it. The son of a professional violinist began taking lessons, but gave up in frustration after a short time because what he was being asked to do “wasn’t music.” He was used to Tchaikovsky, Brahms, Beethoven. The simple variations on Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star didn’t hold any significance for him. Yet because of that, he would never be able to play those great works that he thought of as “music.”

Sometimes, the notes we’re asked to play today don’t sound very much like music. They’re just notes. Sometimes the work we need to do is just work. It’s not the recital, or the published book, or the changing-the-world that we seek. And yet too often, by avoiding those seemingly insignificant gestures, we cut ourselves off from the very happiness we seek.

I see myself doing this in so many areas. Sometimes it seems like too much of a bother to drag myself downstairs in the morning to make fresh-pressed carrot juice, pull out my journal and write my morning pages. Yet when I do this simple ritual, both the physical and spiritual nutrition give me energy throughout the day. Why do I resist it so much?

When I play my violin, something in me comes alive that is dormant at other times. The richness of the tone, the burn under my ear, the way it can speak things that must remain wordless...it’s like magic. So why do I practice so infrequently?

When I write, I feel awake. I remember. I think through things. I see things I can’t see any other way. Yet I am an infrequent blogger, infrequent journal writer, and as much as I see myself writing a book someday, I wonder sometimes how I’m going to get there.

I think I have become too concerned with doing something significant that it has paralyzed me from doing something - anything - at all.

In the book “The Artist’s Way”, Julia Cameron talks about this very thing. She talks about all the ways we choose to remain “blocked” - unable to move forward in our creative endeavors.

“If being an artist seems too good to be true to you, you will devise a price tag for it that strikes you as unpayable. Hence, you remain blocked.”

“We want to be great - immediately great - but that is not how recovery works.”

“Judging your early artistic efforts is artist abuse.”

“We say we are scared by failure, but what frightens us more is the possibility of success.”

After nearly three years of feeling sidelined by chronic illness, I’m starting to feel well enough to do some things. To try some things. And I’m terrified. It’s like there are all these things I want and I’m afraid to really go for them because I’m frightened I’ll get sucked back into a neurotic, achievement, “doing” focused existence.

Yet if I’m honest that’s not the only thing I’m afraid of. Upsetting the status quo is never easy - even when you don’t like the status quo. Making a change usually has ripple effects...not just in your life but in the lives of those you care about. And so many of the things I want to do, I want to do perfectly...

...not merely small, and seemingly insignificant.