When the brilliant Jennifer Acker first took over as director of Eclectic Music, I probably did a lot of annoying things I wasn’t even aware of.

However, one thing I was aware of and had to really try to tamp down was a tendency to meet any idea with, “Yeah, we tried that back in [year] and it didn’t work.”

I had to get my head around two things:

One, maybe Jen could accomplish something I couldn’t; and

Two, maybe now we had the resources to be successful with something that had once failed.

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Years ago, I was teaching music lessons six days a week and managing my music school on top of that.

I like to be busy, but I was starting to get tired. To my surprise, the thing I was getting tired of was not the bookkeeping and appointment setting and other mundane tasks. It was teaching the music lessons.

I found myself with less patience and more resignation. The energy I usually put into problem-solving, digging deep and going beyond the minimum to find just the right approach for a given student — it just wasn’t there.

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Aimee Mann’s 1995 album I’m With Stupid closes with a truly beautiful, profane song called “It’s Not Safe.”

"All you want to do is something good,” she sings, “so get ready to be ridiculed and misunderstood.”

I rarely feel that cynical, but I often come back to that song to appreciate the solidarity. It helps to know that I’m not alone in feeling so alone sometimes.

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A friend has two daughters in elementary school. One of them loves to revisit her earlier childhood — pictures she drew, early attempts at spelling, and photos of herself. She has said that she wishes to go back and be a baby again “so I can see how cute I was and how much everyone loved me.”

The other sister, however, feels uncomfortable with her former self. Her past work makes her cringe. “I was so stupid,” she says, laughing and rolling her eyes.

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I’ve talked to many families over the years who have told me how much they love my school program — but won’t be enrolling their child.

It goes something like, “We love your school and we’ve gone around and around on how to make it work, but she doesn’t want to leave her friends.”

It is entirely possible that these people are just saying that to be nice, but I think there’s more to it.

It seems related to a logical fallacy that Cal Newport points out in his book Digital Minimalism. Newport suggests that people tend to be hesitant to give up an activity or situation that has any benefit, despite the unwanted downsides.

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