When I was a kid I think I took piano lessons for 3 years. It didn’t help. It’s definitely one of those things that I wish I had mastered. Listening to Mark Merrit play piano, I’m a little jealous. Ok maybe more than a little. Hopefully by the time I’m 50 I’ll have some time to master that large paperweight with white and black keys in my living room. Mark’s life seems to revolve around music. But it wasn’t always that way.
Mark worked “regular” jobs for 15 years after college. He was a marketing analyst for a large non profit primarily focused on fund raising. Throughout those 15 years, he wrote musicals, screenplays and songs, as well as a masters thesis on unsustainability, all of which he hoped to one day be able to focus on full time.
Then in 2007 his employer thought he would be happier elsewhere and sent him on his merry way. Turns out they were right. After two months of traditional job search Mark gave into his muse. Over the next year and and half, he developed a number of creativity services through Potluck Creative Arts (http://potluckcreativearts.com/), including collaborative songwriting workshops and other offerings based on Appreciative Inquiry, an innovative organizational development methodology. As The Offhand Band, he wrote and produced “Everyone’s Invited,” an album of original songs for kids and families (http://theoffhandband.com/), conceived and created using Appreciative Inquiry-based tools.
Piano Lessons
He then also became an accredited teacher of the Simply Music piano method, a truly extraordinary way of teaching piano. More recently, he began providing improvised musical accompaniment for the Mop & Bucket Co., an improv comedy group (http://mopco.org/). Mark now has nearly 40 piano students and, combined with the additional income from his other pursuits, he is finally close to positive cashflow. “More importantly, I am contributing meaningfully to people’s creativity and personal growth, while also creating a situation for myself in which I will have fair amount of time available to pursue my own creative projects. With any luck, I will find some innovative (and perhaps entertaining) ways to helps people, organizations and societies move toward ecological/economic sustainability.”
Mark recommends escapees from the 9 to 5 be frugal and focused on the products and services you offer. “It is easy to overspend, and to get caught up going in too many directions. Throwing things at the wall to see what sticks is fine, but building something from scratch takes work, and spreading yourself too thin will only ensure that any given offering will take that much longer to make its way and get to the point where you want it.”
Mark is a strong proponent of out sourcing. “As much as possible, stick to the specific tasks/activities you’re good at and that you enjoy. When there’s something else that needs to get done, get other people to do it whenever you can. Know who you are and what you can do, and do it in ways that foster the best in individuals, communities and ecosystems.”
Mark values most the fact that he is simultaneously benefiting from and setting an example, especially for his daughter, about living a life where there need be no conflict between work and play, survival and satisfaction, livelihood and “life.” If more people understood and acted on the ways that these false dichotomies can be resolved, there would be more fulfillment for people, both in and out of 9 to 5 jobs.
