You must prioritise self-care and still be a passion driven artist. We often lose perspective and become our work. This tip helps you maintain a healthy separation between the artist and the art.
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Transcription by www.speechpad.com Page 2 of 3Hi. I’m Tracy Margieson and I’m the project manager of the Arts Wellbeing Collective at Arts Centre Melbourne. I’m here today to give you a hot tip on how to prioritize self-care. My first question for you is do you already prioritize self-care? So if you’re not feeling well, do you have a few days off from your creative practice? Do you skip purchasing new tools for your work and buy yourself a massage instead? Do you go to bed at a reasonable hour, even if you haven’t finished editing a particular chapter?
If you do, I’m very impressed and you can skip the rest of this hot tip. If you don’t I am going to offer you a proposition as to why. When it comes to self-care, you come last because you care more about the work than yourself. We value creative and artistic output so highly, that all our energy can be wrapped up in a project, and if this is at the expense of our mental and physical health, so be it. It’s amazing that we care this much about our work. It’s incredible, and really it’s unsurprising. That’s what we’re in this wonderful business for, storytelling. The capacity to communicate meaning, to prompt change, to challenge the way that people think. We care. We care a lot about that. And I’m not going to tell you to care any less about your work.
Where we get into trouble is where we can’t see where we stop and our work starts. You can deal with the odd tough week, a takeaway meal, a skipped gym session. That’s to be expected of any stressful job. The challenge with our job is that what we do is so closely tied to who we are. Our artistic and creative output can become an extension of ourselves, a representation of us, and dangerously, how good or bad our art is, by whatever measure we’ve put in place, is suddenly judging how good or bad we are.
So you’ve probably heard of the phrase of, it’s the danger of having all your eggs in one basket. If your success, identity, sense of self, your status, and your reputation hinges on the success or failure of your work, when something bad happens, as it inevitably will, you’re affected by a negative review, no one comes to your show, you don’t finish your work on time, it’s not up to the usual standard. It’s your whole world that comes crashing down. It’s not one part of a complex interconnected identity. It’s not one part of a very long career and many successes and failures.
The bad things that happen in the arts, they’re facts of life. They’re not judgments on your character. What I want you to do right now to start thinking about this is to think about all the things that make you you. And to remind yourself that if you have a bad day, yeah, so your grant doesn’t come through. Your deal with a sponsor crashes. No one purchases your latest piece. No one buys tickets to your show. At the end of the day, that doesn’t stop you being a friend, a sister, a brother, a daughter, a son, an activist, a feminist, a foodie, an avid reader, a gardener, the world’s greatest cook, a collectible dolls lover, any of the many, many, many things that make you you. You care about your work, but you are not your work. It’s an amazing part of you, but it’s not all of you. You’re awesome, no matter how many successes or failures you’re going to face in your long and really exciting career in the arts.
I hope you found this hot tip useful. And if you’d like to find out more about Arts Centre Melbourne or the Arts Wellbeing Collective, visit artswellbeingcollective.com.au.
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