Accepting Many Paths

...And from out of the blue
And without any guide
You know what your decision is
Which is not to decide...
-Stephen Sondheim, Into the Woods

I am many, many things.  I am a writer, a musician, a vocalist, a dancer and an aspiring actress.  I have many dreams, some of them are in the process of being realized.  It is difficult sometimes to separate my artist-self from the din of all the people telling me what I need to do in order to be famous (or at least moderately successful).

I am writing this blog so that myself and others can come here to pay attention to their inner selves.  Right now I am reading The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron and I will probably be making a lot of references to that book.

I am an introvert.  This means that I get very drained if I hang around people too much.  The problem is, I am in a people-oriented business.  Recording artists and actresses HAVE to deal with people. A lot of people.  A lot of networking- so how do I stay sane?

Sometimes I don't.  Sometimes I entirely freak out because of all the stress.  But that is why I've started this blog- so I can have a place to go to find myself.  To remind myself that I am not merely the sum of my parts.

At times I think the more talent one has, the greater pressure to use it- it is often difficult to determine just what parts of the talent one should be pursuing at any given time.  Right now I am juggling a part-time teaching career with a part-time recording artist career with a part-time practicing schedule and a part-time pursuit of my other dreams.  I'm not entirely sure what I'm doing is the right thing to do.  Sometimes I feel as though I should just pick one and really pour all my energies into that one thing.  But I'm not ready to do that right now.  I think acknowledging this is one of the first steps to artist self-nurturance.  For so long, I would beat myself bloody by criticizing my choice not to choose.  I won't do that anymore.

So step 1 (out of thousands) in artist self-nurturing:  1. If you can't choose what you want, don't choose.  The things you want will become clearer as you continue down your many paths.

I sincerely hope that this blog will end up helping others like me, people who have many many talents and,  at times, feel overwhelmed by them .

In the meantime:  Check out this book.  The Artist's Way

Love-

The Self-Nurturing Artist