Things have been getting clearer for me.

I have been asking for help where I need it. I have a tendency to do things alone, without reaching out, and it has only served to make me feel isolated and cramped up inside.

My intention to change things this year seems to have set something in motion. The right people, books and mentors seem to be finding their way to me.

What has surprised me is the layers of revelation I have been getting about my own perfectionism. I have always secretly known it was stopping me from doing more of what I wanted to do, but I had no idea, until recently, how deep that went.

My 7 year old went ice skating with her class several times in the month of January. I joined them a few times, and it was difficult and painful to see how timid she was on her skates.

She has always been very late to reach milestones--for example, most toddlers begin walking when they're 12 or 13 months, some even earlier. She didn't walk until she was almost 17 months. But she NEVER fell. While all the other kids were hurtling themselves around on their wobbly legs, crashing into coffee tables and sidewalks, she was clinging to things (and me) and NOT FALLING. Only when she was dang sure she could walk without stumbling did she go ahead and walk, and she has walked perfectly ever since.

Watching her learn to skate, I was reminded of this. While all the other students whipped around the ice, she clung to the walll, shuffled ever-so-carefully across the edges of the ice, trying her hardest NOT to FALL.

It's hard to watch, because she misses so much fun. And while perfection is achieved, by ruling out the chance of failure she makes learning harder and slower.

But then I realized that in many invisible ways, I am exactly like that. I have spent far too long trying not to fall as an artist. I have spent far too long clinging to a wall.

This, more than any outward circumstances, is what needs to change if I am to move forward.

I am not talking of worldly success here. This is an inside thing. Whatever the outcome might be, for better or worse, I must let go of the wall and let myself fly and fall and spin and fall and run and fall.

Learning this has helped me to further pinpoint the deadness I have felt these past few years. Somewhere after the release of my first album and the publication of my first few poems, I began to think that I needed to shift my focus over to "getting it out there". Which changed my whole focus from process to product, and I inevitably started to get tangled up in things I had not anticipated.

"Fame is a poisonous word for an artist." Julia Cameron wrote.

William Blake said: "I should be sorry if I had any earthly fame, for whatever natural glory a man has is so much detracted from his spiritual glory. I wish to do nothing for profit. I wish to live for art."

And while being a singer and songwriter is very much ABOUT having an audience (I suppose I could sing to the cat, but that's not really what I feel I am here to do) I personally feel really really messed up when making art becomes more of a business than a path.

Van Gogh wrote in a letter: "My only anxiety is what I can do...could I not be of use and good for something?...in a picture I wish to say something that would console as music does."

I feel something inside me coming home, remembering why I sing. I want to console, to ease suffering somehow through my music. How and when that happens is none of my business. It feels like such a relief to name this, to say it out loud.