My to-do list : an end of an era?!

a small deep dive into the 'cloud container'

Hello summer. I made it to the finish line of the fiscal year in my first year of having vacation time (PTO) - I was an edge walking freelancer/contract worker for so many years of my nursing career, chanting freedom is priceless - but then I took the plunge and accepted that full time gig last fall. They graciously gave me some PTO up front, which I have sliced and diced to make it work with my life over these past few months and today, starved for some time off, I realized I had 3 glorious hours left to burn in that bank. If you don’t use em, you kinda lose em - they go into a sick bank that you can’t really access until next year’s gets used up or if you are actually sick. So I cashed it in toward my 40 hours of commitment for this week, so as to conserve what will become of my new bank of hours which I will resume squeezing as much time out of as possible and negotiating longer weekends and extra days here and there.

I don’t know how everyone lives like this for their whole lives! Imagine just 2 weeks off a year or whatever. I’m used to NO paid time off - the former model of the last 20 years was if I don’t work I don’t get paid. And that’s the gig economy we live in. Many musicians and artists I know live like this, and maybe to the normal civilian, this feels reckless and dangerous, but to me it is more sensible to being creative and AVAILABLE for your art.

I’m sticking with this job (for now) because JEEZUS H it’s pretty awful out there right now. I even put it together last week that if I hadn’t taken this full time gig, the hours I was used to getting as a ‘PRN’ employee were getting cut cut cut, because suddenly we are living in scarcity and witnessing the destruction of so many programs and efforts in place to support all people.

I’m really lucky to land where I have and no doubt I have worked hard to get here. Even if I complain ‘I have to work’ so I can’t really go on tour so much right now, I’m also OK with that - I had a lot of time to do that and I’ll pull back the curtain here and say touring is actually not all that great most of the time.

But how do I answer the question about what I’m doing? Am I still an artist/musician/creative?? YES. And slowly but surely on my own terms, I am finding the place of creativity where I want to land. It is slower than it used to be, and that is ok. When I look back at how I used to fill a calendar it makes me want to throw up a little. I’m proud of those times, and there was a lot to learn and a lot of music to play and a lot of schlepping around and short couches to sleep on and late night shit.

As it rolls into my birthday month, I am taking stock of all of this and thinking about where I am vs where I was 10, 20, 30 years ago. It’s super interesting because sometimes I can travel back in time to very specific moments, while other times it is a total blur. I am fortunate to have many wonderful touchstones that I can use to connect the dots, and sometimes I fall asleep thinking about the chronology vs the cyclical nature of it all.

I’ve gone less ‘to do list’ and more ‘cloud container.’ By cloud container I mean ‘What is in the cloud that is giving me life and inspiring me to do better?’ It isn’t as linearly focused, which at times makes alarms go off in me because I am classically motivated by time and results. The thing is, results still happen - they are just less measured, and the ‘fail factor’ is also less measured. I’m failing less because I am giving myself wider margins in the cloud. And the cloud also allows for resting times, and blocks of non productivity.

Have the studies shown that I am feeling better than in the past when it seemed so right to be so perfectionistically hard on myself even if I was running a consistent 9 minute mile and no less than 20 miles a week while also working 12 hour shifts, playing in three to five bands, probably drinking too much (coffee, sugar, alcohol) and still being dissatisfied with my weight, love life, level of success in the music industry and also damn it not famous?! (hint: I recently figured out that being famous also sucks for the most part)

YES! I am feeling better. It’s all subjective, and this subject is saying uh huh… thank you for trying to get to bed at 10 most of the time and love the body you have even if it’s a little softer around the middle.

And there is still so much to do - always - it’s quite overwhelming. Time is the most valuable thing we have, and how we spend it is sometimes a hard decision. I still struggle. But having a little bit more priority on the QUALITY makes a huge difference.

Here’s a new song I wrote with Bob Lewis in ‘Slowforce.’ We have been slowly writing this song for months. This is the latest draft of 'Entertainment Tonight.’ We had fun making this little video last week on our usual Tuesday Slowforce Sessions.

Thank you for reading and listening! love you lots, MP