How to get moving again after a break

Welcome to the Thought Follower, the savvy Solopreneur's guide to building a business on LinkedIn.

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When I was a kid, my mum taught me to play piano.

Over a few years, I developed my skills to a decent level. I learned all the fundamentals: hand positions, time signatures, major scales, minor scales, sharps, flats & clefs.

I put all these techniques together and managed to play increasingly complex pieces.

Eventually, I started lessons with a new teacher to help me prepare for my first piano exam. Things were going well, and I was getting more and more comfortable.

Then one year, I took a break over summer. No practice for at least a month, maybe more.

I remember walking to my teacher’s house for that first lesson back. I remember sitting down at the piano and preparing to play the piece I’d been practicing.

I froze.

I had no idea where to put my hands.

‘Middle C’ is ground zero on the piano. Everyone knows Middle C. It’s like knowing where to put the key in the ignition to start a car.

And I’d completely forgotten where Middle C was.

I glanced up at the sheet music. I glanced down at the keys. I could feel my teacher’s presence hovering beside me—inquisitive, then curious, then concerned.

I asked for help. She placed my hands in the starting position.

I glanced at the sheet music again. And still—nothing. Everything had left my head. The notes, the scales, the time signatures, all of it.

It turned out to be my last piano lesson.

As I walked home, preparing to tell Mum what had happened, I realised the truth:

I quit because, after all those years of practice, I wasn’t really playing music. I was just memorising sequences of button pushes and pauses. I had no musical intuition.

Fast-forward to today.

Sitting down to write this first newsletter of 2025 felt exactly like sitting down at the piano that fateful day in the 1990s.

I literally felt like I’d forgotten how to write. I wrestled with the blank page, and the page won.

Shame washed over me. Unhelpful, antagonistic thoughts swirled:

“People pay me to write for them. And now I can’t even write for myself. I’m stuffed.”

“I coach people on building small, sustainable, consistent habits. And I can’t even stick to writing a newsletter once a week. I’m a complete fraud.”

Finishing what I start and sticking with things for the long term aren’t strengths of mine. As I procrastinated, a sense of doom washed over me. Another project left to fall by the wayside.

But then something amazing happened.

I talked about my struggle with someone else.

In this case, my wife, Caro, as we debriefed on the day over the remnants of a half-demolished pasta bake.

The story of my struggle to learn piano flashed back to me, and the pieces for this newsletter fell into place.

I found a reframe for my writer’s block; a silver lining to the cloud.

I’ve been offline since December 23rd. I deleted emails from my phone. And for the first time in ages, I truly switched off. Maybe my downtime worked a little too well - I felt a world away when I sat back down to write again.

And that’s when it hit me—it wasn’t failure. It was a reset.

I guess what I’m saying is, a problem shared is a problem halved.

Don’t beat yourself up if you get the wobbles, or if you forget where Middle C is. Share your struggle with someone who’ll listen.

You haven’t forgotten how to build your business. You just need to put your hands back on the keys.

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