Having Your Cake: Teaching and Living a Creative Life.
As I sit here, on the cusp of August, more than half way through my summer break, I feel a familiar sensation in my solar plexus: dread.
While I feel so incredibly lucky to have this time and space, there is a sense of impending suffocation; a fear that all my creative energy and momentum will be halted as it often is once the school year commences.
In the past, I’ve made the mistake of using the summer to hustle music gigs and other creative commitments, saying yes to way too much, and later regretting it, when I started back at school, and nearly every weekend was booked. Burn out is no joke, and as a highly sensitive person and empath, I have to be especially careful.
I realize, in retrospect, that when I was booking all the gigs and saying yes to all the things, I was operating from a place of fear and lack. A fear that if I didn’t say yes to playing at this restaurant, they would never have me again. A fear that if I didn’t fill up my calendar, I would later struggle to get gigs. A fear that if I wasn’t playing every weekend, I wouldn’t be perceived as a legit musician, and as you can imagine, it quickly spiraled out of control.
This was taken a few summers ago to use as promo for the many gigs I had booked throughout the year.
So the question I’ve begun to explore is, how can I continue to teach AND live a creative life without burning the candle at both ends?
I think for starters, maintaining a sense of spaciousness in my schedule throughout the school year is critical and so I decided to lay the foundation for that this summer.
These past couple of months have been expansive for me in so many ways. I launched my intuitive business, which included collaboration with a graphic designer (shout out to Perfect Evolution!); I wrote content and designed my website; I started another Instagram account; and finally, I had my first public appearance as an intuitive reader. I feel like I am stepping into the truest version of myself, and while it was a ton of work to get this off the ground, it should be able to fly with only some light maintenance.
Reading Tarot and selling my homemade smudge sticks at a local artisan market.
As far as music, I am only giving energy to what brings me the most amount of joy, and right now, that’s my band. Once school starts again, we don’t plan to play out more than once or twice a month and I am intending to keep it that way.
Our energy is a precious commodity, especially in a field that demands so much of it, and to be able to give to our students fully, we first need to give to ourselves. So do what fills you up. Make space for it. As one of my favorite writers, Toni Morrison said, “write at the edges of the day.” And I think you can replace, “write,” with whatever that thing is for you, whether it’s dance, sing, crochet, read Tarot, whatever. Your soul is calling and it’s hungry.
