Ten Hard-Learned Lessons at Thirty

So. I’m 30 now.

My 30th birthday was on July 4th, and I thought it would be nice to do something a little different and offer a retrospective of my career thus far. I quickly realized that would be really, really boring to anyone actually reading it, so I changed tack, reorganized, and came up with something a bit more productive and potentially useful. These are ten lessons that I learned the hard way over the last three decades that have helped shape my life and career. They are mostly geared toward people younger than myself (20-somethings most likely), though I’m sure my colleagues, elders and friends will be able to chuckle and nod along.

First up…

1.) Be nice to yourself. Others will take care of being mean for you.

This is the most difficult lesson I have had to learn in the past decade - I am still working on being nicer to myself on a daily basis. Put bluntly, there are a lot of mean people in the world and you are going to meet a ton of them. Most often, they are mean because someone else was mean to them in the first place and they are simply perpetuating a bitter cycle. The best way to break that cycle is to be nice to yourself. You will learn to shrug off meanness if that meanness isn’t met and reinforced by self-doubt. Getting rid of self-doubt, of course, is notoriously easy, not a life-long pursuit or anything like that, right? Right. It takes time and practice, and even if you don’t entirely succeed, the attempt will pay off in the long run.

It was Jim Goldsworthy, my piano professor at Westminster Choir College, who helped me to learn this lesson in particular. He pushed me, certainly, but always encouraged me to take care of my own mind above all else. He had a knack for seeing when I was struggling internally, particularly when I couldn’t read the music that he put in front of me. I’ve never been able to read music in real time, a stumbling block in my career that has caused an enormous amount of self-doubt and anguish. Jim would always tell me to be nice to myself in these moments, and eventually I learned to listen to him. I still can’t read very well, but I no longer let it steamroll my ambitions.

2.) Throw the snowball.

I often find myself frustrated with the fact that I still struggle as an artist and as a professional. I’ve composed over a hundred original works, I’ve been published many times over - and yet somehow, I still have days, somewhat regularly, where I want to just quit and be done with it all. When moments like that happen, I feel entirely blocked. My internal self feels rolled up, angry and irritated to the point where I start having imaginary arguments about some stupid shit that may have happened ten years ago or ten minutes ago. Put simply, I become a big ol’ festering ball of stress.

In the past two years or so, I’ve been getting in the practice of what I have dubbed “throwing the snowball.” It’s not easy to let go of stress, but one of the first steps in my experience is to accept that you have too much going on inside of you to be a productive member of society, and that you’re most likely being kind of an ass-hat to the people around you. As soon as you accept the snowball exists, throw that big ol’ ball of stress away from you, internally, and take a break. Take a walk, go fishing, jump in the water - whatever you think will feel good to you in that moment, just go do it.

To be clear, this does not mean shirking responsibility, and I’m well aware that I’m incredibly fortunate to be able to set my own schedule as a composer who works from home. There are ways to do this in a workplace too though, or certainly at the end of the day at the very least. The core idea stays the same: throw the snowball. That argument that you’re having in your head with your ex’s second cousin at some imaginary pool party? It isn’t helping anyone. Throw it away.

3.) Thriving on exhaustion is not the same thing as working hard.

This is without a doubt the most difficult point on this list to write about. It is a sensitive issue, but one that bears discussion in my opinion. I consider myself to be someone who has worked incredibly hard to carve out my little corner of the music world and scratch out a living for myself as a composer. To be successful in any field, the reality is that you will have weeks, months, or years where you will need to work 50, 60, 70+ hours a week just to make ends meet. That has certainly been the case for me. There is a sense of pride that comes of working hard and seeing the fruits of that labor pay off over time. Whether you are doing it to support a family or simply out of a desire to have a successful career, developing a good work ethic is important.

However, there are people who overwork themselves needlessly at the expense of others. I don’t really know how to describe true workaholism other than that you know it when you see it. People who pride themselves on being the busiest bees in the forest are often hiding their own misery behind how busy they are, and this misery inevitably trickles outward to the people that surround them or work for them. True workaholics do tend to be successful, and in being successful they also tend to have a cadre of loyal underlings who won’t cross them out of self-interest (or, in some cases, fear). This means they often get away with being hard to work with. It’s a toxic environment for everyone involved, including the workaholic themselves.

Truth be told, I am not one to think that a person should take pride in the fact that they are too busy to eat, sleep or do anything else for themselves besides work. Is it necessary at times? Absolutely. But cultivating an endless cycle of work-place exhaustion without any discernible benefit is, in my mind, is both bad business practice and bad mental health practice. I have been a part of far too many one-sided conversations in which the other party rambles at length about how busy they are in a voice that somehow combines irritation, one-upmanship and runaway pride all in one tone. I avoid these conversations now, as I feel they are a symptom of some pretty distorted contemporary work practices and expectations. I work with people like this only when I have to, but I do not seek out prolonged or recurring interaction.

There are numerous studies and mountain of evidence to suggest that, for most people, anything above a 40-hour work week will result in a drop in productivity and personal well-being. Working hard is important, but there is also more to life than work.


4.) Don’t listen to anyone who tries to tell you that there is only one way to do something.

This has happened to me so, so many times. Success breeds confidence and authority, and often for good reason. But sometimes people who are at the top of their field allow this to distort their world view and lead them to believe they have discovered the only right way to solve any given problem. Learn their method, then find your own road. Get lost in the side streets; there’s probably something more interesting down there anyway.


Which leads me to…

5.) Practice curiosity; to be alive in this universe, to discover its little facets and corners, is an incredible gift.

Some human qualities are often described as being more innate than acquired, and being curious is one of them. I hold that, for adults, curiosity is a learned skill and we must practice being curious regularly to get good at it. My wife Sarah, also a composer, wrote about this beautifully in her new blog this week. I highly recommend reading her own thoughts on this subject and keeping up with her upcoming entries about finding the impetus to create. Sarah and I have different styles and interests, but we are united in how we approach the world in search of compelling phenomena that can serve as the basis for a musical composition. Furthermore, it is through this inquisitive approach that we have both cultivated a genuine sense of curiosity for these phenomena that goes beyond our own interest in a piece of music; we now have a greater appreciation for the intrinsic value in all things.

This has led to different kind of joy - a return to the feeling of child-like wonder that only seems to ebb as we age, as we lose our curiosity. In the past I have written extensively about my experience with Nancy Luce, the “Chicken Lady” of Martha’s Vineyard. To the untrained eye, she might be nothing more than an amusing historical foot-note; to the curious eye, she was a remarkable woman with a profound story to tell, one with the power to move people in ways they did not expect to be moved. I am profoundly, universally thankful that I had developed the skill of curiosity enough to the point that, when I saw Dan Waters’ Nancy Luce print on the wall of that house in Philadelphia, I stopped and thought, “What’s that??”

You can read more about In Heaven, Hereafter here, and listen to the piece as performed by William Jewell College Concert Choir here.

6.) You are going to suck at pretty much everything, until you do it enough to no longer suck at it.

I tell student composers and theory/composition classes this all the time, particularly when I am travelling and only have a few minutes or hours with them: you have to give yourself license to suck at something for a while before you can get good at it. I’ve seen so many composers with vast potential give up because the first couple of pieces they composed weren’t outstanding or didn’t get the reception they had hoped they would. Honestly, there were times when I almost gave up as well, most often when some older student or another wrote a piece that was damn good (I couldn’t admit it was good at the time, of course) and got some amazing opportunity because of it. Your time will come as well if you keep working at it. The only way to ensure that it will not come is if you storm off the stage in a fit.

This concept continues into professional life as well, though perhaps to a lesser extent. Eventually, it becomes less about being good or bad at something and more about a trajectory of development and growth. But we are all human and professional jealousy does exist. When a colleague does something really cool that, frankly, I wished I had thought of first, there is a wire that gets tripped in my brain that causes me to initially look for some kind of weak point in the work, some kind of fault to show that that person is still human. I’ve been working on this for years now, and that knee-jerk, reactionary instinct only lasts for a few seconds now. Some people never get over it, and let me tell you - an artist who only ever finds fault in other people’s work because of their own insecurities stinks to high heaven, and you can smell it a mile away. To quote one of my weird, guilty pleasure movies, Super Troopers: “Desperation is a stinky cologne.”

7.) Don’t be afraid to do something just because you think you’re going to suck at it.

This one is perhaps more of a personal quirk for me, but it’s worth saying anyway. I’m often afraid of doing new things that I have a feeling I’m going to suck at. It’s one of the reasons I didn’t work out for so long; nobody wants to be the guy who goes to the gym and flat-out sucks at being a healthy, functioning adult human. Similarly, I remember the first time I went fishing as an adult . I had wanted to get back into it for years, but I was so nervous about sucking at tying knots in front of other fishermen that I just could not bring myself to do it for ages. In the end I got up the courage to do both (well, sort of - I started working out, just not at a gym) and realized that I was only ever wasting time because of this fear.

In a somewhat related vein is another piece of advice: don’t worry about being seen as dorky or nerdy for having genuine interest in things that might traditionally be seen as dorky or nerdy. Time moves on and societal tastes change constantly. For example, I used to have this weird, gut-wrenching worry when I was younger that my sincere interest in video games as an expressive, artistic medium, particularly environment-rich exploration games such as Skyrim and (more recently) Astroneer, would lead to others looking down at me for some reason. Times change, everyone plays games now – my wife even loves Slime Rancher. When I was visiting my dad in upstate New York last year, I gave metal detecting a go and had a blast doing it, but I waffled on buying one of my own for months because it just seems so. damn. nerdy. In the end, I found that people don’t stop to point and laugh, they stop to ask where I got it and how much it was.

The point is, we like the things we like, and neither the fear of sucking at them nor the fear of embarrassment should get in the way of pursuing these interests.

8.) Be thankful for your mentors, but remember that they don’t own you.

This is a big one. Oddly enough, it was one of my mentors, Phil Cooke, who told me this during my PhD. I’ve carried it with me ever since.

If a person chooses to believe in you and offer you support, you should not have to grovel and bend to their every whim to keep them happy. You should listen and learn from them, surely, but there is a point (in some situations) where the normal mentor-mentee relationship becomes strained by an overwhelming expectation of deference on the part of the mentee. I have personally witnessed this many, many times, and it’s painful to watch. If you find yourself bleeding time, energy, even sense of self in service of the machinations of a person who is supposed to be mentoring you, only to find that you are not receiving adequate support in return (or, god forbid, outright hostility or unwanted sexual advances) - it is time to walk the other way.

It’s OK to disagree with the people who have inspired and guided you, and it’s OK to be honest with them about it. James Jordan was one of my main mentors at Westminster Choir College; he and I fought regularly for years, and what came out of it was a real friendship and artistic partnership that continues to this day. If they are worth their salt, your mentors will engage in difficult conversations with you that will only deepen your relationship, and you will in time become a colleague and friend. If they give up on you, shame you, or otherwise engage in strange displays of power to put you in your place - good riddance, walk away. You do not need to prostrate yourself and yes, you will survive it. There are plenty of people out there with good ideas who are willing to help.

Speaking of being willing to help…

9.) Be willing to help.

This is one that I’m still working on. It’s easy to get so caught up in our own worlds that we forget that other people sometimes need help too. If you see a fundraiser for a cause that doesn’t personally affect you but you understand its purpose in advancing the well-being of others, chip in a few bucks. If someone seems a bit crestfallen or lonely, check in with them, ask them what’s up. If you see someone in physical pain, offer your assistance. One of the greatest things I have ever done was to stop and help a bleeding man staunch his wound on the side of the road in West Philadelphia. He and I are still in touch, and our interactions inspired I Shall Not Live in Vain.

As you no doubt have seen in the past couple of weeks and months, selfishness is now the norm in this country. For those of you outside of the United States in countries where Covid-19 is being more effectively contained, I can indeed confirm that many people here feel that their freedom to go maskless is literally more important than the lives of other human beings. At the very beginning of this entry I stated that there are a lot of mean people in the world and that you’re going to meet a ton of them – these are those people. If you feel attacked by that statement, I urge you to look in the mirror and ask yourself if this fetishization of American freedom, this laughably ridiculous notion that you are somehow being oppressed for being asked to exercise caution in the face of a global pandemic, is truly worth the life of another human being. If the answer is yes, well…

                … throw the snowball, Tom…

And, finally…

10.) Quit smoking.  Just do it.

It sucks. You will hate it. You will be a monster for a few months. You will fight with people you love and forget twenty minutes later why you were mad at them in the first place. Just do it. It’s worth it. The resources below might help you. For me it came down to quitting cold turkey, eleven months ago today.

Thomas LaVoy2 Comments