“A few weeks ago, I pulled out of a shift at my casual bartending job because I was too tired. I felt all the guilt and shame that I always feel when I cancel anything that doesn’t have a positive covid test to back it up. My manager told me it was really inconvenient that I couldn’t work and I wasn’t on death’s door with illness but I knew that I physically couldn’t make my body and my brain do that shift.“
I had a big week coming up: Three bartending shifts, three drives between Castlemaine and Melbourne to work on admin for my band The Maes and my choir, One More Chorus. My 16yo cousin doing work experience with me all week. My friend Holly Arrowsmith from New Zealand coming to stay in Castlemaine and play a gig with me, and finally, the choir’s annual winter concert.
My band are getting ready to release a new music at the moment. We are working on all the behind-the-scenes, strategic part of being self-managed artists. This means working what would ideally be a full-time job for no pay and fitting paid work into all the available gaps. It’s lonely and stressful. It feels like running a small business that any business-minded person would probably laugh at. It also feels like doing a job that I am profoundly unsuited to. I don’t enjoy it; I am not organised or self-directed and I hate spreadsheets.
So I knew I was bone-tired, burnt out and in retrospect, I was also a little bit depressed. Instead of working the shift that I pulled out of, I picked up my friend Holly from the airport bus. I took her to stay at my parents’ house and cooked a roast chicken dinner. We chatted about the album that Holly was releasing, we talked about having kids and touring and how the music world has changed post-pandemic. I felt my spirits lifting.
The show next day was the first time I had played live in months. I got on stage to a sold-out crowd, genuinely worried that I would forget the words to my own songs. I did forget them but of course it didn’t matter. The crowd were kind and engaged and I felt awake and alive, funny and charming. I felt my voice open up and my body relax into the adrenaline rush of being on stage. Then I sat and watched Holly’s set, spinning an emotional landscape, drawing feelings into pictures and making us laugh and cry with catharsis and connection. I had the feeling I get every time I transition out of music admin and back into music: “This is why I do this. This is what all of the exhausting, thankless work is for. These moments are worth it!”
Two days later, I was back in Melbourne for the choir concert. With driving, set up, soundcheck, concert and pack down it was about a 16-hour workday. Moving furniture, taking phone calls, organising food, flowers, guestlists, seating, merch. Making sure all 100 choir members, 300 audience members, three special-guest artists and the sound, lighting and camera crew had everything they needed.
“There is no feeling that I have ever felt like standing in front of a choir of 100 people, singing a song that I love at the top of their lungs. My whole body and the room itself vibrate with the sound of people singing together. It is far and away the most connected and present that I ever feel. “
After the concert I remember being embraced tearfully by 50 odd choir members, family members and friends. Everyone went home and my sister and I, dizzy and delirious, packed up the furniture until 11:30pm. I slept badly on a mattress on my sister’s floor and got out of bed the next morning so tired that I fell over as soon as I tried to stand up.
“I got in my car and drove back to Castlemaine and straight to my Tuesday bartending shift. My memories of that shift are blurry, but I remember my Dad walking in towards the end. “How are you still upright?!” He asked me. “Why aren’t you in bed cuddling your dog right now? How are you still working?”. It hit me like a ton of bricks that I was exhausted to my bones but that I was fine. I wasn’t scared of being tired and of stretching my body to its physical limits. Feeling connected to my community, my body and my art made the demands of my job feel completely ok.“
If you need some more advice on how to support yourself through your busy lifestyle, check out the Support Act Guide to Self Care here.
