Points of failure: Cement vs. play-dough

I keep a board in my office where I pin wins and losses: rejections from literary magazines, next to encouraging notes to try again. Music royalty checks that don’t add up to a cup of coffee, next to uplifting fan mail. Every piece of paper I print and hang there is a way to track my efforts toward becoming an artist-entrepreneur.

When the weather began to turn in September, I found myself turning moody alongside it. Summer was ending and I was nearing forty-one. The loss column on the board went from looking like feedback to looking like bad ratings. The flowers in the yard withered while my insecurities blossomed.

“Why couldn’t I have wanted to be a real estate agent?” I joked to my partner while driving past a billboard one day. I’ve made that mistake before, going down the ‘safe’ road. I graduated in engineering and haven’t worked a day in the field. Insecurities aside, I know deep down that the biggest failure would be to succeed by someone else’s definition.

When I feel myself falling into a slump, I’ve learned the best thing I can do is tend to myself like a friend. So with the last days of sunshine approaching, I hit pause on everything: writing, music, and any tallying on the board.

For ten straight mornings, I sat outside and talked to myself.

I bought a blank notebook and started a journaling prompt I’d learned earlier in the year: writing in longhand from the perspective of myself at eighty years old, as if he were having a conversation with the me of today. I journal every day, but I’ll admit this one felt a little woo-woo. I had to suspend my inner cynic.

Each day I chose a topic: relationships, money, writing, music, family, etc.

“What is the blind spot I’m not seeing?” I’d ask, then let my pen run across the page. It took a few minutes each time, but once my mind got out of the way, I could dive into my own well. By day three, the answers that began to surface seemed to carry weight.

You strain too hard, the old man wrote. It’s easy to confuse effort with progress, but the key to life is to play.

He had my full attention.

“How should I play?”

Play is play. It’s not how, it’s what you’re playing with.

“What should I play with?”

The issue is you play with cement when you should be using play-dough. Cement seems permanent, it appears certain, but nothing lasts forever and nothing is guaranteed. The game of life is best played with dough. You build, you stretch, you break it apart, and you rebuild it into something new.

I had to pause and smile before I kept going.

When you play, you lose track of time. That’s how you know you’re using play-dough. When you strain, you’re overwhelmed, focused on the outcome. Your legs get stuck. That’s how you know you’re using cement.

I thought about the board in my office. It’s not a scoreboard, it’s a board game.

It was a monumental insight for me. I felt as warm as if summer had started all over again. I wrapped up the remaining topics and went back to my schedule with a renewed sense of not purpose, but enjoyment.

But weeks passed, and the rhythm of obligations picked up its tempo. Annual planning season at work landed on top of a song release and a tour announcement. The temperatures dropped, and I caught myself getting irritable again.

This time, however, there was a new piece of paper on the board.

“Play-dough.”