Transcript

get some sleep · Dits & Dahs

Sue: I'm thinking about the day's activities. I'm recording this on a Sunday evening and I think every day at this time of day about what got done. I don't know if that's a habit that you have, but I find it useful such that it helps me organize my plan for the next day. And one of the things that I've learned about myself is that as a 64 year old widow is that I'm pretty efficient and keep the same tempo and doing things as I have all along since I've been an adult. The difference being early in my music career, there were stretches, basically periods of several months where I worked all out doing the commuting to get to the day job, come home, go out, teach lessons privately, played concerts, rehearsals, come in at home probably midnight on a weeknight, on a school night as I like to refer to it. and then repeat and rinse Monday through Friday. Saturday and Sundays were potentially filled in the mornings with additional students, rehearsals, day jobs in terms of music performances, know, Saturday afternoon gigs and things, and then going into Saturday night. And as a musician who played oboe and jazz piano, I'd have a variety of gigs, meaning that I'd have to remember which instrument, what I was doing. Anyway. And I would go like that for months and years and I'd be exhausted. There's no question that physically during that period of time you run yourself ragged, but you do it because you don't know when the next gig is going to be and you're trying to build something and invest your time with working with great musicians. And of course, now I look at this ⁓ as a widow. And also consider the fact that prior to that, I was sharing responsibilities of this household with another person. And those responsibilities still have to be taken care of, whether it's one person living in the house or two. And I've learned over the past few years of being a widow that I have to be very forgiving and patient with myself. give myself lots of grace for learning how to reorganize, getting all the same stuff that gets done in the timely period, knowing that I'm not able to double up. I have to just figure out a way to make it happen and allow for the fact that I know that running myself ragged is not the way to get a good result. But still at this end of the day, when I compare what I had set as my agenda at the beginning of the day and what I've accomplished in the evening, There was a couple of things that just didn't get done. And learning how as a person, if I had done that when I was all out trying to make things work in my early part of my career, I don't regret the pace at which I did them. I just think I'd be a lot stronger person earlier in my life to make better choices were I utilizing the approach that I'm using now, which is to be forgiving. I think that is a timeless sentiment to take on board. doesn't matter how old or young you are, you can always forgive yourself. You have to learn. You have to teach yourself. It's not to do less with your life. It's to understand that what you get done, you get done. And that's a success, to be fair. A couple of things that didn't get done today, I still have time to get done, and therefore it's not the panic at this hour of the night, just before going to bed, that I still have to do things. So that's a good... adult forward movement in my life. Because the other aspect of doing all of that work as a young person in my career was that the sleep schedule was horrible. Very early on in my career, my main money-making musician job was being a music copyist. And that's working with a fountain pen, handwriting all the notes for the musician's part. And that in of itself is a story to tell, but A lot of times the work that I got were the late nights going in having to have the music on the music stands by 8 a.m. in the morning kind of jobs and dependent on the composer's ability to crank out music quickly, know, 30 second advertising jingles, but it's enough to be hiring copyists to do them and. make certain that all gets taken care of correctly, accurately, cleanly, legibly, in a manner that then can be presented for a one-time performance. The other aspect about this type of copying is that you have to learn to be especially clear in your markings because the musician only has that one time. They have to sight read it. They play it down perfectly without ever having seen it before. I mean, they'll look at it. but they won't have ever played and seen it before. It's that one performance and that's it. And it can create a lot of sleep deprivation. And the key hack I have learned, as well as giving myself forgiveness and grace, is that of making certain that I have the same sleep schedule. Because you know you're gonna have times when it's gonna interrupt it. So if you do your best to have the same hour that you turn in every night and the same hour you wake up in the morning, that's fantastic. because then whatever gets out of schedule is easy to recover. I'd hope that somebody who's not as old as I am, even though I'm not ancient, might listen to this and... earnestly recognize that by all means do everything that you can possibly do with the energy that you have to do it in. Make hay while the sun shines. But to also be more forgiving and give yourself grace when things don't work out as you envision. Wherever that's at, you're taking good physical care yourself by ensuring that you're getting a good night's sleep. Because you control you and you're happy. You have joy in your life. That's one of the ways that you can help defend it and make certain you have plenty of happiness and joys by getting good night's sleep and being forgiving of yourself when things don't go to plan. Get stuff done though. Work your butt off. By all means, follow me. I'll show you how to work your butt off. Regardless, thanks for listening. I really do appreciate your ears.