Hello again! I cannot believe that I’ve already been with RGM for a month – time has just been flying by! My original plan for this post was for it to be an update on how things are going here and what I’ve learned over the past month, but when I sat down to write anything I was struggling with putting any of it into words (I’m a musician here, not a writer!). But that’s not to say that I haven’t learned a lot in the past couple of weeks as I’ve gone from observing sessions with my supervisors, to co-leading with them, and to recently taking over running some sessions myself, because every day I show up to something new. Whether that’s playing music with and interacting with all kinds of different clients, having to learn the chords for a new song while we are in the middle of playing the song live in a session, or planning for when I’m leading now, every day looks nothing like the day before. It has also been amazing to be able to participate in in-person sessions and to make live music again together, which is something I haven’t done since spring of 2020. Overall, it’s really all been a lesson in balance and time management. On top of all of that, though, one of the biggest things that I wasn’t expecting to need to work on was music for myself.
“We may be creative at work, but not all creativity has to be work.”
I had this happen before in school as well but after starting here and being surrounded by and having to play music for other people all day every day of the week, for the first couple of weeks here I really stopped listening to any music for myself at home. I would listen to a song if I was practicing it and needed a reference to learn it, but I wasn’t listening to any just for fun. Of course, I want to maintain a healthy relationship with music even outside of work, so this week I’ve been working on changing that by taking around half an hour every day just to listen to music that I enjoy (generally while getting some work done or while hanging around the house). For me that looks like listening to a lot of classical music or opera (since that’s something I enjoy and its variety from what we do at work) but everyone’s self-care music is something different. I do want to encourage people though, whatever their music or their self-care looks like, to go do it. It doesn’t have to take long or to be this big involved thing – throw some music on while you’re doing chores, or take an afternoon to work on a hobby of yours, or to go to a park. Especially if you’re working somewhere where one of your main passions is the focus of your work, it is so important to make time for that passion while off-the-clock too so it doesn’t just turn into something you do because you have to for work – we may be creative at work, but not all creativity has to be work.
Until next time,
Sarah
