Learning to Do Life Well

When I was thirty I met a cousin on my father’s side of the family. He’s about a decade older than me. We discovered quickly the differences between us were vast and probably too difficult to overcome for there to be any kind of friendship between us. He grew up in the family business. I took it up out of desperation. He was an artist. I was a guy who was there to get paid.

What was the family business? Drywall.

Hanging, taping, floating, and finishing.

He was great.

My skills were passable – mostly.

We were both doing work for the same company. He was an hourly employee and a highly valued one at that. I was a subcontractor. The lowest one on the totem pole. Right where I belonged.

He’d show up at 7 am and work until at least 3:30 pm Monday through Friday. I’d get there shortly after nine and work until six or so. This habit quickly got in his craw. He took me to lunch so he could explain life to me.

“You know, there’s a reason school hours are from 7:30 am to 3 in the afternoon,” he informed me.

“Yeah, why’s that?”

“It’s so that you learn to be disciplined and show up to work on time every day.”

Sounded more like programming to me. I didn’t want to do what everybody else was doing. I could see the value in it, but the trade-off didn’t seem worth it. And I definitely didn’t want to continue working in construction the rest of my life.

I knew he was trying to help me, but I couldn’t stop myself. “So, my showing up every day at 9 and staying longer than most isn’t disciplined?”

We had a short conversation about conforming to norms and expectations, but it didn’t take. Just like the hundred or so other conversations, consultations, and commands of this type that came before it from bosses, managers, sergeants, captains, and teachers. It wasn’t so much that I was rebellious, which I was until I was about twenty-one, but I was just never able to fit into the work-a-day lifestyle I was being encouraged to adopt.

My entire adult life I hated sitting in traffic with everyone else every morning and evening, traveling to and from jobs I either hated or could barely stand, just so I could get paychecks at or below subsistence levels. I simply wasn’t cut out for it. I got called things like, “lazy,” “flakey,” “flighty,” “weird,” and numerous other derogatories I feel no need to mention.

In my work-a-day life, whether in the military, on a construction site, or in the offices of a Fortune 100 company, I always felt out of place. I knew nothing was going to feel like being on stage. There’s just nothing else like it in the world. I also knew most of the rest of life was supposed to be enjoyable, as well. The problem was all other work felt as though it was making withdrawals from my life’s accounts and the meager paychecks at the end of the pay period never balanced the books.

When I got a chance to teach music to supplement my income and then make a fulltime livelihood, it was like coming home to a warm, welcoming house in the middle of a windy Nebraska winter. Don’t misunderstand. I still have to make sacrifices and compromises with my work, but they easily balance out with the rest of my life. I don’t wake up every day excited about work, but I do most days.

Finding what I’m good at and how to make a life with it took a long time. Mainly because I was distracted by what others were telling me I was supposed to do with my life and what advertisers and MTV had trained me to want as a musician. It took years of doing things that took from the quality of my life before I became brave enough to be creative and do something that enhanced and added to the value of my life and to the lives of others.

These days I try not to waste time wishing I’d gotten up the courage to do it earlier. I try to be thankful every day I get to build my life around teaching people in my community to have fun and make music.  

I don't know if I am doing life well, yet, but I do know I am getting better.