The Wellspring of Obsession

I was once cautioned that obsession is the wellspring of madness.

Which I suppose is true, but is a deal I’d make any day.

Throughout my life, I’ve had many interests, passions, and hobbies that I wanted to better myself in. Where I wanted to compete at the highest level I could. 

Hockey. Bodybuilding. Boxing. Chess.

Yet in the back of my mind, I always knew I wasn’t doing all that I could. I wasn’t lazy or cutting corners, and I often found myself better than many—but I knew deep down that I wasn’t willing to obsess over practicing as much as the doing itself.

Which is a fundamental weakness if you want to become your best in any realm.

This is where singing is breaking the pattern.

The practice could be considered tedious.

Breath work, funny-sounding warm-ups, and repetitive technical exercises that make Yuki glare at me. Humming like a deranged monk in the shower.

Turns out, a lot more goes into singing well than putting on a song you love and belting out the lyrics. The above are the exact kinds of things that I’ve avoided in all my previous interests and endeavors, where I was content to get by on the natural ability I could develop and hone through repetition of doing, not practicing.

Now I find myself getting lost in the weeds of improving my singing technique at least twice per day. And once I start, I don’t want to stop. I’m having to pull myself away from singing to write, to tend plants or other responsibilities, to walk, lift, sleep.

I have to take care of the above before I sing, because I know that once I slip into practice and play mode, cutting that momentum off is startlingly difficult.

This obsession is relatively new, of course. Which always makes things easier. But I know my patterns well enough to sense that this is different, that I’ve gone deeper.

In My First Local Lesson, I introduced what I’ve come to see as the holy trinity: joy, identity, and ambition braided together. This is the fucking key, my friend. 

Hockey gave me joy and identity, but if you’re paying attention, you learn pretty quickly that you’re not going to become a pro—and so ambition was neutered.

Bodybuilding gave me identity and ambition, but drained my joy.

Boxing brought ambition and joy, but I never identified as a fighter.

Chess offered joy and identity, but for similar reasons as hockey, little ambition.

But singing…

There’s nothing I enjoy more, apparently. I’ve never ever felt so aligned in my life—holistically, and even more so when I’m singing. And the image of one day providing the vocals for drum’n’bass songs and performing on stage is so real I can taste it like the strawberry rhubarb danishes I’ve been hoovering up all summer.

And so I find myself exploring new territory.

I don’t know what will come of tugging on this thread.

But I’ve only been doing so for two months, and everything is changing in the best ways.

So I cannot stress this enough:

Look for what blends your joy, identity, and ambition into a braid. Your search likely won’t be easy, painless, or swift. But if you’re willing to toil in your own soil, eventually the orchard will appear, bursting with fruit you never thought you’d taste.

With love from the forest,

~ Alexander