Reading this through my own musician lens made me simultaneously glad for the author, and a bit disappointed too. There are aspects of the post I definitely re

Reading this through my own musician lens made me simultaneously glad for the author, and a bit disappointed too. There are aspects of the post I definitely relate to, including the title itself. Although I framed the “chore” as practice and routine. Even so, most of my breakthroughs as a musician have been either aided or directly propelled by time away from the “chore” or even playing at all. Motivation to be prolific has all but once[1] come from internal bursts of creativity, and artificially motivating that way has generally been creatively stifling. Maybe the music I could have created would eventually overcome that, but I didn’t like the feeling that I was pushing myself to create something that felt dead as soon as I’d created it. I’d rather go years without touching an instrument and feel like what happens when I find my way back has the life I’m ready to bring to it and the motivation I feel then when I do. So my SoundCloud[2] is pretty sparse and doesn’t even include many things I’ve recorded in previous bursts. I’m certainly not a musician in the sense that I’m actively producing works for a hoped-for audience but as a person who likes to play music and sometimes record it, I’m glad the way I’ve treated music as a chore is to devote myself to the music that feels like it’s ready to come out of me rather than trying to force something out that isn’t there. 1: The exception was I decided one time to participate in the prompt (“challenge”) to record an album in one month. I actually took the “challenge” further, to record a track per day for that month. Only got 12 tracks in, but it went better than I expected. 2: Same handle as here