The Consistency Challenge
How a friendly competition with my partner got me making music again.
6/7 = 100%
Does every story start some time during the 2020 pandemic? It sure feels like it.
A few weeks into lockdown, my husband came up with a personal challenge for self improvement. With little opportunity for distractions, aside from being on childcare duty 24/7, we turned our focus to what we could control.
“The Consistency Challenge”, as he dubbed it, was to pick a few things that we both wanted to get better about and do them consistently for about 7 weeks, with the goal of improving the quality of our lives. The things that were on our list included exercising, lifting weights, meditating, waking up early, reading, listening to music, etc. We taped it up on our refrigerator and put an “X” in each box every day. Here’s a picture of what it looked like eventually (this iteration was very ambitious):
Each item on the list needed to be completed 6 out 7 days in a week. You only got one skip. One skip was considered a perfect score. At the end of the week, whoever won the week got 3 hours of childcare coverage from the other person. Oh, and you had to mark it down the day you did it or it didn’t count. Ruthless!
10 Minutes of Creativity
When we were conceptualizing the first 7-week challenge, I kept saying that I really missed working on music. Music was a big part of my life and it took a backseat after having kids. Subconsciously, I resolved myself to the idea that music was no longer a thing that I did, just a thing of the past, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was missing from my life.
I added 10 minutes of creativity to my challenge. I allowed myself to count all sorts of things, from mindless piano playing to writing random words in a google doc for 10 minutes. No matter how tired I was, I could always squeeze in 10 minutes before I went to bed just to get my “X” in the box. I used my wins for solo walks in nature, poking around local shops and thrift stores, or taking myself out for lunch.
It wasn’t always smooth sailing and there were definitely a few weekends where I served UberEats orders to my husband while he streamed football games in the bathtub. Once I got started though, songs ideas started to form again and I found that 10 minutes would sometimes turn into 45 minutes. After a few weeks, I was waking up early to drink coffee and play music while everyone was asleep so I wouldn’t miss my creative time. After a few months, I was writing more songs, better songs, and at a faster pace than I had in all the years before I became a mom.
WTF?
There is no way to describe how surprised I was without using my favorite expletives. I’d gone so long in life thinking "if I just had an extra 20 hours a week” or “if I didn’t have to have a job” I could finally get the time to be creative again. During the challenge, I came to a major realization: I didn’t need nearly as much time as I thought I did. In fact, having all that time would have been wildly inefficient. So, if I just needed a little time every day, what else could I do? Could I learn how to produce my own music? (spoiler alert: yes)
So here we are at Blue Hour. What is this? A blog? A newsletter? Are you really starting another thing, Suzie?
Yes, I am.
Blue Hour is possibly a blog.
It is possibly a newsletter.
It is definitely the most magical time of day.
It is also the title of the album I am recording right now.
Now that I’ve experienced the ebbs and flows of creativity, lost myself in a sea of distraction, and found myself floating back on the Consistency Challenge lifeboat, I want a space to document making music that isn’t a short form video designed to stroke an algorithm (you know who you are). Plus, I love connecting with other people who are on their own creative journeys, and if there’s a chance that my experience inspires someone else to pick up their paintbrush or guitar or design a new recipe, then that’s pretty sweet.
So, I make no promises on how frequently I intend to post. But one day, I will release an album called Blue Hour and when I do, I think it will be pretty cool to have some writing from when I was working on it. So, thanks for being here with me and stay tuned for release info and random semi-infrequent updates from yours truly.
