The Mechanics and Maintenance of Motivation

Greetings floggers.

Read on to get the reference.

Yesterday during my hill climb, I paused at the top, as I always do, to sit on the bench and enjoy the view and—let’s be honest—to catch my breath.

A family walked up behind me. A four-year-old child asked his parents “what’s he doing?”. The mom was doing her best to indulge this question-asking period with out letting on that it annoyed her.

It was clear it was beginning to annoy her.

“He’s relaxing and enjoying the view,” she said.

I turned instinctually because I recognized the voice. I found myself looking point blank at Nicole Sullivan from Mad TV. On the trail, or anywhere around here you don’t have to recognize a celebrity to know they are one some level. All you need is the look.

The look is different that what you might get if you glanced casually and a mere mortal. A celebrity—even if he was only had one line in that made-for-TV-movie eight years ago—will look back with an expectation of recognition. They may be dreading it, hoping for it, or both, but the look of expectation is there. Ms. Sullivan had that look as if she had let out some secret just by answering her son’s question.

Nicole playing "Antonia" on Mad TV

I pretended not to recognize her but between my instinctual glance and ‘the look’ everyone involved knew I had. Except the four-year-old who was only aware of his Mom’s general discomfort in public but not enough to stop him from asking every question he could think of.

“What are those dogs doing down there?”

“Making puppies.”

My hill-climbs have been only two or three times a week lately. I could partly blame a pulled muscle in my calf but I’m also finding it hard to get myself out there in the mornings. I’m not where I was at the height of my boot camp experiment, but then I knew I wouldn’t be. I have come to accept that I am a swinging pendulum, a hunter that sprints and rests instead of making the steady progress of a farmer.

I have known this about myself for years but I always thought of it as a character flaw, something about myself that I had to fix, change. I don’t deny that I can use improvement in many areas but in the past when I worked against the grain of my personality I always seemed to end up where I started and frustrated to boot. I felt I had failed and effectively gave up allowing myself to go months without exercise or picking up my bass and singing even. Now I try to work with my nature instead of against it. I get more done and end up liking myself more.

Always a plus.

Like being on a swing, if you kick at the right moment you'll go higher but at the same time it’s obsurd to try to remain at the apex of the swing. Being ‘up’ is caused by the momentum and the back-and-forth is caused the gravity of my personality. To get anywhere, I have to work with it and except the to-and-fro.

Six steps forward, four back. Even if I’m not doing as much, I’m further ahead than when I started with some better habits in place.

Another way to look at it is to think of a combustion engine, starting with a single cylinder, two-stroke engine. The piston is forced down by a burst of energy as the fuel mixture combusts then it returns back up to expel the exhaust. The momentum of the crankshaft keeps the piston moving even though the actual power occurs only through roughly one quarter of the cycle. With a single cylinder engine the toque (turning power) is relatively low and it’s easier to stall.

A four cylinder engine with, it’s pistons firing one after the other in succession, is under direct power at more points throughout the rotation of the crankshaft even if it’s a four-stroke engine (the piston moving up and down twice between firings).

Perhaps my cylinders could be different partitions of my life and my goals. While my exercise piston is in the power section of its stroke, perhaps the music recording is expelling exhaust, and yet another part of my life is drawing fuel and preparing to fire.

Obviously, any endeavor requires a certain amount of consistency and unlike an engine, different areas of life don’t have timing chains linking them together with optimum efficiency. I’ve found I simply can’t be ‘on’ all the time but there is a season to every purpose and I can maintain forward momentum if I work in concert with my own cyclical nature. In fact, I find that if I work hard on, say, a certain exercise on the bass, then put the instrument away altogether for a week or so, when I return to it the exercise comes together like magic.

The trick is not to let the engine stall. This is where I often fall off my game.

Engines, like fire, need three things: fuel, air and ignition. To work this analogy further to death: Having dreams like hearing my music on the radio or being booked at a festival, can be thought of as the fuel. Having urgent and specific goals, like weighing under 200 pounds by July 17^th, can be thought of as air.

The crankshaft and flywheel can be compared to habits. Even if the fuel and air are taken away briefly or I’m not firing on all my cylinders, my habits can keep me going for a short time before my dreams and goals, my fuel and air, return.

The ignition spark is harder to quantify and therefore harder to achieve consistently. It is that voodoo world of motivation that baffles me at times. Some people are driven by an overwhelming sense of inadequacy or a void in their life, some by a painful experience. Some people are especially driven by impressing members of the opposite (or same) sex. I cannot say these are prominent factors for me nor is a great desire for material gain. I am generally a pretty happy guy which can be kind-of a detractor in the “Type-A” department.

Like an engine, ignition doesn’t just occur once. I have to remind myself why I sacrifice having a ‘normal’ life, why I scrimp and save, why I have never allowed my day gigs to become satisfying full-fledged careers. I have to remind myself of my dreams, my spark, everyday. Not just to read them on a list but to imagine the feeling of being on a stage before a crowd a people that actually paid to see me. I vividly imagine when a case of my CDs are delivered to my door, the excitement of opening that box and pulling out the first disc and holding it in my hand.

I’m a fairly passionate person so I don’t have to dig deep to find my spark but also in keeping with us passionate types I have to work extra hard to maintain it throughout my cycles.

When it comes loosing weight and being in good health, I am motivated by a fear of making my young wife a widow someday and not wanting my appearance or apparent age to be a reason for someone not to give my music a chance.

When it comes to music I feel I have something unique, God given, and frankly, pretty awesome to share with the world. Once in a while I listen to my mixes and even scratch tracks of ideas and I think: this stuff could be really good if I can produce it professionally within my budget. Someone out there needs to hear this. There is someone who has yet to hear their favorite music: mine. Even if it’s just one pimply faced kid in Idaho, or a bored homemaker in Harrogate, UK, or a hip graphic artist in Stockholm, or a street vendor in Bangkok, I owe it to them to get this music from my head to their ears.

I’m not immune to a thirst for a little glory and recognition either. My goal posts have changed a lot since I was a teenager but I still want to be known for something I created. I want to hear the name “Canandaigua” (my hometown) mentioned by people in the music industry who’ve never been there. I want to inspire bass players everywhere that they don’t always have to be content supporting the endless guitar solo of popular music, that they can step to the front of the stage and find a unique voice in the bass that no one has heard before.

I want a Wikipedia entry dammit!

Delusional maybe? That’s one way of putting it, but the folks in this town who make it through this cut throat and cynical industry have a healthy dose of delusion. They might have a reasonable plan of action but they must have unreasonable expectations.

You know; dreamers.

Dreams of recognition, the delusions of glory and even higher ambitions of doing something noble tend to split the scene pretty early on though. When the chips are down and I am looking for reasons to quit, it’s anger and the fear of humiliation that keep me going.

A few years ago, I was on the road with a band traveling literally to every corner of the country. I was not making much money, playing my own music or even music that I loved but I was happy that I was finally a full-time musician. Then, out of the blue they fired me. “We need a ‘real’ singer” they said. I asked for a period in which I could work harder at it and have a chance to improve since this was the first time they mentioned it. They had already made up their minds, and my replacement had already been hired.

Few things in my life have angered me more. Even now it is difficult to write about it without getting nasty. Audra was even more livid than I was. In the sleepless weeks that followed, I thought of one thing: seeing to it that that band becomes famous, not for their performances but for being the idiots that fired Joel T. Johnson because they didn’t think he could sing.

I bought a book and CD on voice training and started working hard at singing. I started treating it like a serious craft and confronting the psychological blocks and fears about singing I had developed in Jr. high school. I am still on that journey but I am ten times the singer I was then. I can sing higher, stronger, longer and with better tone and more nuance.

That’s just stage one though. My singing skills won’t be rubbing anyone’s nose in it if I have not achieved some level of notoriety.

Being fired like that may have been one of the best things that ever happened to me.

Doubters are worth their weight in gold too. Friends and acquaintances alike who simply, and even reasonably, don’t think I stand a chance. Some are vocal about it, some you can just tell. Most are well-meaning but they all keep me going. I can’t let them be right.

“Behind every successful man is an amazed mother-in-law.”

This blog itself offers me a way to place myself on the line, to make myself accountable. It’s easy to sweep a challenging goal under the carpet if nobody knew it was there to begin with.

Again, I don’t make music to get even or prove myself to anyone but those things can sure help when I feel like giving up, when my pendulum is on its down-swing.

I need to keep all these motivators handy in my tool belt and use them at the appropriate moments: reading my goals every day, remembering my lofty artistic ambitions as well as vividly imagining the social and material rewards, narrowing my eyes at those who’ve cast me off and keeping myself accountable to you, my readers and blog followers.

Would that be “blollowers?” How ‘bout “floggers?”

Perhaps the next time I run into Nicole Sullivan I be giving her the look… even if it’s just because Jocquin Phoenix had started going gray it was harder to tell us apart.