Without any ill feelings, I note that I do “everything” for the band. I mean, I’m not the guitarist, drummer, or bassist, but I’m all the other stuff. And that certainly includes all the non-music stuff like booking, promoting, web design, online communications, blogs and vlogs and all the other cogs. I’m not saying I do as stellar a job as a paid pro would do, but I work my little bum off.
And it definitely takes time. On a “slow” week, all the things I’m doing for the band and music easily take at least 20 hours. On an insane week (like the weeks I’m working on redesigning our web site or updating all our online stuff), it easily turns into 80 hours a week. Yeah, seriously.
As you might guess, this impacts other areas of my life. My friends get used to rushed, infrequent Facebook status updates (often something like, “Almost done! I swear I’ll be back soon!”) and my little household probably just feels amazed that everyone gets fed every day.
Crazy, right?
Probably. But I’m sincere when I say there are no ill feelings. Whereas a day job usually feels at least a little torturous every moment, even if it’s working on my favourite type of project with my favourite people. Which means that people who are baffled at the time I put in often become further baffled. All that work on music and the band, “work” being the key word, and I don’t resent it? Hard to believe, some say…
But here’s why:
First, I was raised to know that where we spend our time shows our priorities. I find that, now that I’ve accepted the reality of my priorities and just let myself give the time I need, there’s deep satisfaction and no guilt.
Second, as noted, there is deep satisfaction from putting the time into this thing I love passionately. I might produce something killer for a day job, but it will never impact me on the same level or mean as much to me as what I accomplish musically. When I give this time, I receive all sorts of good stuff in my head and hearts. (Haha! I accidentally pluralised that last word…Maybe I’ve been watching too much Doctor Who lately, if that’s even possible.)
Third, cos I do like threes, Danielle LaPorte noted in her recent book The Fire Starter Sessions that work/life balance is kind of a ridiculous concept that actually has the potential to cause harm. Fortunately for you, she also posted about that online.
So, the question for you to ponder is this: What truly feeds your soul?
And the followup question is this: How can you give more time to that without neglecting your responsibilities? (Sometimes, by the way, the answer is to wrap some things up and decrease your responsibilities. On the other hand, I’d also assert that the answer is probably not to give up responsibilities entirely…I think you’ll have a more fulfilling life if you are striving to take care of yourself instead of just letting others handle that or neglecting yourself.)
Now, I’m going to go spend some time with the man who helped me develop some of my ideas about priorities and responsibility. Cos the people I love most are the “thing” most wont to get me to take a break from happily working on music 🙂
(And, just so you can share in the irony, the reason I chose this topic today instead of a couple others that are as loud in my brain, is that it wouldn’t take as much time to write cos I need to prioritise some other things over the band stuff today. Ha!)