A couple of weeks ago I had a spontaneous lunch with a friend. Tacos, tunes, and conversations about how we both treasure being able to decide how to spend our time. That day, I was waiting to hear about whether a new income stream would be viable, and I was a bit edgy because I knew that the cost of that gig would be time away from the work I most care about.

That work did not work out. After spending a day or two feeling bummed (and a little tense about the income that will not be incoming), I realized that the universe was helping in its customary trickster fashion: That contract would have taken me in a direction that would have felt like being pulled out of a candy store by the arm.

Sometimes things feel like pulling, but you don’t know what you’re being pulled away from. You just know that the pulling itself is uncomfortable. You don’t know what the candy store looks like—or maybe you don’t see that you were in a candy store in the first place.

But hanging out and playing tunes that sunny Friday afternoon reminded me in vivid detail exactly what my candy store looks like. (It will surprise no one that my “candy store” is like an excellent but slightly divey coffeeshop with books and a stage for performances—I did come of age as a bookish music kid in the 90s, after all.)

I needed that reminder.

I have spent the last six months working in my business (client work) rather than on my business (strategic thinking, marketing, etc.). It’s very tempting to linger in this space because it’s more immediately gratifying to play a gig, send editorial suggestions to a client, or give a coaching session or fiddle lesson that feels like it’s doing immediate good in someone’s life. It's also easier—especially when you know that working on the business is going to require some hard thinking. And in my case, that thinking includes exploring my own personal candy store to figure out what to do with the massive concrete wall that’s popped up in the middle of it. That wall has bisected the two halves of my artistic, intellectual, and professional life, and I didn’t realize until very recently how much of my energy and soul it has taken to maintain it.*

Since I started the Feral Freelancer, People Who Know Business have stressed the importance of finding a niche. That’s sound advice—but what I struggled to figure out was how to make my particular (perhaps peculiar) bag of tricks make sense. Every business advisor I’ve talked to has urged me to keep my work as a fiddle teacher/performer (and to some extent my work as a music scholar) separate from my editing and coaching—separate from “the business” except perhaps when it’s useful in demonstrating my expertise in working with scholars’ prose. But it turns out that trying to maintain this kind of double professional life feels like being in the closet—like I am keeping part of myself hidden in plain sight.

But my engagement with music isn’t something to be walled off or hidden—it is absolutely central to who I am, and therefore to what I do. I believe that my life’s purpose is to play music as freely, as well, and as humbly as I can; to build, support, and be part of communities that form around music (and to some extent, those built around nonnormative genders, sexualities, and/or neurotypes); and to have what I hope are useful thoughts about these areas of human experience. In my mind, my editing and coaching work already align with this mission; now I have describe and demonstrate how this alignment enhances what I offer in each realm.

I haven’t figured out yet exactly how removing this wall from my business will affect how I talk about what I do (my “branding”), but I do know that I will continue to offer developmental editing (and occasionally line and copyediting) for music/sound scholars. I will also continue to provide coaching for academics and creatives who need support around process, including those who seek to mitigate the challenges and maximize the strengths that come with having brains that work differently. But I’m going to spend some quality time really thinking about how my background as a musician informs my coaching—something I had not yet done thanks to Ye Olde Wall (although I have very consciously integrated some coaching techniques into my fiddle teaching). Because now that I think of it, I am certain that the relationship between music and coaching is fundamental to how I work with clients, whether they are musicians or not.

So—stay tuned—pun intended! For now, I will leave you with some words that have been echoing especially loudly in my mind these past few weeks. They come from a conversation I had with one of my main fiddle mentors, Connie O’Connell. This quotation appears in my book (p. 113 for anyone who is playing along at home) where I describe Sliabh Luachra fiddler Julia Clifford’s brief attempt to train to be a nurse in Falkirk, Scotland. Here’s what Connie told me:

[Julia] told me she had the fiddle under the bed, in this [bed]sit in Glasgow, and she said, “Connie,” she said, “there was dust down on top of it—‘twas never taken out of that spot.” . . . She nearly fecking died there, like. Well, I think . . . after making up her mind that she wasn’t going to live in Glasgow for the rest of her life, she really delved into music big time then, and she played it, and all her friends and all her company—and anything that she touched after that, there had to be music involved in it somewhere, in her whole life.

That’s how I’ve been living my life for a while, and it’s time for me to act—and work—like it!

* This wall situation reminds me of my gradual process of coming out as queer in my twenties and early thirties: I didn’t recognize just how much of my bandwidth I’d been using to maintain the façade of being straight—even (and especially) to myself.

In related news….

I am very proud to announce that Rising Voices in Ethnomusicology (the Society for Ethnomusicology’s student newsletter) just published a brief piece of mine in their “Dear SEM” section (I don’t think it’s paywalled). And congrats to outgoing RV editor Hannah Snavely for successfully defending her dissertation!

Strangely, I don’t have any music gigs coming up, but that’s given me a bit more bandwidth for my slow-burn project of learning to play concertina. And the youth ensemble I lead for the Blue Ridge Irish Music School had its first busking experience a couple of weeks ago, complete with ice cream afterward. I’m sure that won’t be the last time we hit Charlottesville’s Downtown Mall with some polkas and our “Boaty McBoatface” set.

Partly because of this summer music lull, I have plenty of capacity for taking on editing projects and new coaching clients. If you’ve been curious about what it’s like to work with an editor and/or coach, please reach out via the contact form on my website.

Thanks for reading!