Life Admin
Juggling for the Creative Professional
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Dear Reader,
For a long time, I felt a sense of guilt and anxiety that I was not working a typical 9-to-5 job. That was the American Dream, wasn’t it? The standard that you had “made it.” That you were officially an “adult” with a fully stabilized life. Yet whenever my life came close to fitting this steady structure, the predictability and monotony of it grated on me. You’ve heard of “self-sabotage.” Well, consistently I found I did things to mix up my schedule so I wouldn’t get bored; so I would wake up and lean in and drive for more.
Thus, at each stage in my life, I found I was juggling multiple friend groups, multiple schools, and multiple jobs. Let me give you a window into what my life looks like right now:
I work two part-time jobs. I attend classes at Beverly Hills Playhouse three to four times a week. Classes are four hours long, which is a commitment of 12 to 16 hours, not including rehearsal time for the scenes I put up; schoolwork is about 20 hours a week, another part-time job. I’m just finishing up a professional mentorship program (through Hollywood Prayer Network) and working with a social media manager to put out two posts a week. I run a newsletter which publishes three posts a month, self-published a novella last month, and am self-publishing an anthology later this month. In the long term, I am bringing five short films through post-production and writing a feature film. In the immediate future, I am producing / directing / and acting in a short film I wrote, which will be shot one week from today.
If you are experiencing secondhand anxiety, breathe deeply. It will pass.
Disclaimer: I am not raising a family. I don’t have children, a spouse, or a significant other. Instead, I have an incredible and diverse group of friends. All of this leaves me free to spend my time as I see fit; I pour my energies into growing my career in arts and entertainment.
When people ask me how things are going, my mind goes blank. I then try to pick one thing that would be interesting to the person in front of me and share that. Then I make a quick pivot and ask them how they are doing.
For today’s newsletter, I want to share with you the tips and techniques I use to keep my mind stable, my body healthy, and my spirit grounded as I build a diverse portfolio of creative work. I hope some of these tested habits prove useful to you as you pursue your own diverse goals and dreams.
LIFE ADMIN: Tip, Tricks, & Techniques
Sleep:
If I don’t get enough sleep, not only do I run the risk of becoming ill, but the quality and speed of my work slows down substantially. For myself, I know I need seven to eight hours of sleep a night. When living in Connecticut, with a regular day job and a steady writing practice, that looked like being in bed by 10 p.m. (or 9 p.m., bless), and up by 6 a.m., often 5 a.m. (thank you, Lord!). My creative brain fires and hums the best early in the morning, so that was the ideal time to write.
But now that I’m in acting class until 11 p.m. at night, I’m home by 11:30 at the earliest, and frankly, I need some time to decompress from the day. This means bedtime is after midnight. I finally figured out that my whole schedule had to flip: if I’m up late, I need to sleep late. It was hard to unclench my death grip on my early morning writing routine, but if you’re going to have a career in entertainment, there will be late nights.
When you work 9 to 5, your “downtime” is the evenings. Yet, with my evenings filled with school, my body, mind, and spirit naturally claimed the mornings as my “downtime.” Night owls are looking at me strangely right now: “Of course, slow morning. It’s not rocket science, genius.” But for this type-A morning bird, it was. Give me the win. If I start work before 11 a.m., I am impressed with myself, but I don’t demand that I be at the desk before then.
Exercise:
When you exercise, it gives you energy. Even so, for a long time, exercise felt like a luxury; something I could only allow myself to do if I had the time in my busy schedule. Yet I discovered over and over again that when I didn’t exercise, I had less energy to work. My mood stayed sour, and my mental capacity hovered around “grinding desperation.”
The time of day you work out depends on the demands of your work schedule. For years, the best time for me to exercise was 4 p.m., after a long workday but before homework. Late afternoon workouts gave me a second wind. These days, I’ve learned that my first choice in the morning MUST be to put on the workout clothes, lace up the sneakers, and stumble outside for a run or some strength training. Am I happy about it? No. But after about fifteen minutes, I look around, blinking, surprised I am where I am, and very pleased with myself.
For those of you who don’t have a steady workout routine, here is what I’ve discovered: when you exercise first thing in the morning, you take ownership of your body. You’re getting the blood flowing, exploring all the nooks and crannies of your muscles, and stretching out the myelin sheath. The myelin sheath is a fatty insulated layer holding nerve axions in the brain and spinal cord. When you stretch this out, from my experience, it allows greater flexibility throughout the day.
Working out allows me to get fully into my body and think more clearly. There’s also a feeling of overcoming: I got out of my cozy bed to do something physically hard, and I achieved victory. Everything else that comes at me that day, I can handle.
A caveat for the other overachievers in the room: it’s very tempting when you start exercising to go “all out.” You made it to the gym, and you’re going to make it count! However, if you push yourself to full capacity, you’ll be down for the count for the rest of the week. (Not at all speaking from experience here…) I’ve learned to ease up, pull back. Do 30 minutes instead of 50. Over weeks and months, the stronger you get, the harder you can push. But the key here is consistency: developing a routine that you can stay steady with, day in, day out. Slow and steady wins the race.
Centering:
Yes… We’re still talking about the morning. After sleep and exercise, I take about 90 minutes to make breakfast, journal, and read. This is when I spend time processing the things bothering me, reflecting on my wins and blessings, and praying for the people in my life. This is where I get things off my chest. Julia Cameron calls this “Morning Pages” in her book “The Artist’s Way.”
To be at full mental and physical capacity, I must be fully nourished. My spirit needs to know that I am seen, heard, and taken care of so that I can go all in with my work. If I’m feeling ignored, then I’m running on empty the rest of the day. This is the most important part of my day, because it’s when I go to the Lord to fill me up. It’s when I make sure I’m on the same page with Him, listening to what He has to say to me and what He thinks about me. Spoiler Alert: He loves us so much! I daily need to spend time soaking in that love so that everything else I do comes out of that fullness. If I don’t, then everything else that day will come out of a need to feed my soul.
As much as I’m feeding my body with breakfast, I’m feeding my spirit with the only one who satisfies, and He satisfies with the finest of the wheat.
Block Scheduling:
At this point, I reverse engineer my schedule: what meetings do I have? Classes? I mark those blocks off in my schedule and work backwards to make sure I deal with the work tasks that are the most pressing. Often, this process is a bit like triage: what is due today? What can wait until tomorrow? I work remotely, so I am able to manage my time with what makes the most sense for me.
Obviously, I must prioritize the expectations of my day job, as other people’s workflow depends on me doing my part. Yet, at the same time, I am growing an artistic career, and I’m out in LA for a reason. I tackle this by determining which creative project is the most pressing and move that forward however I can on each given day. I set deadlines for myself, because that’s how art gets made: due dates.
The key here is flexibility: I can’t possibly touch every single creative project every day. Thus, I pick one or two and complete the necessary tasks to move it forward. My best metaphor is a chef working in front of a stove: she’s got several pots and pans cooking on the burners, and a turkey in the oven. She rotates between them, watching the onions and letting the soup simmer while she chops up the next batch of vegetables. Just because she’s not in the act of stirring a sauté, it doesn’t mean she’s not cooking all things at once.
I have learned the importance of discerning which projects need immediate attention before they burn, and which projects can be left to sit and simmer, like mulled wine. We must all acknowledge our own human limitations.
Tally the Hours:
I keep a day planner where I sketch out a tentative schedule for myself, yet one of the biggest purposes of this agenda is simply to keep track of the work accomplished. Since I work at strange hours, driving around LA, taking meetings, and interacting with different jobs, I have no standard for whether or not I’m working 8 hours a day. This means I get home at the end of the day feeling like I accomplished nothing because I see the mountain of work ahead of me.
I finally started writing down all the hours I was putting in on different tasks, be they day job, meetings, school, or creative development on my own projects. I easily blasted through an 8-hour workday. For those of you who are freelance, gig-based, self-employed entrepreneurs, I recommend keeping track of what you accomplish throughout the week. It’s highly motivating and saves you from feeling like all of your work just went out into a black void.
Weekly Personal Finance Meeting:
If we don’t spend time managing our money, credit card debt increases, loan and bill payments are forgotten, and unexplained charges go overlooked. We must know where we stand financially to head toward where we want to be. I’m a big fan of taking the smallest step possible when facing an overwhelming job. Set a one-hour weekly meeting with yourself to handle your personal finances. “Dow Janes” has been incredibly helpful to me as I build healthy financial practices, but there are plenty of other training programs out there. Gather your credit card statements and identify where each dollar went. What payments need your attention? Develop a plan: where can you cut back? Or conversely, what money have you not been spending because you’re just “surviving,” that you need to step up and invest in yourself?
From my experience: not knowing what’s happening with my money is far more stressful than taking an hour once a week to orient myself to the facts of my financial reality.
Vision Casting:
If we are just surviving in the day-to-day, paying bills and going to work, then nothing will change. About once a quarter, I feel myself itching for the big picture. Where do I want to be in a year? What steps do I need to take each month to get there? How does that change what I’m doing week to week, right now?
My biggest accomplishments all came from daydreaming about where I want to be in a year, or five years, and then reverse-engineering the concrete steps I need to take to get there. These goals often take a lot of focus, effort, and stamina, so be sure that the dreams you’re chasing are what you actually want. Personally, I find I have a general idea of my dreams, and that sends me heading in the right direction. The more I learn about myself and the process, the more my goals are refined, clarified, and often expanded.
Have Fun:
If you’ve made it this far into the article, you can tell that I love getting work done. One of my friends recently pointed out that my definition of a “good day” is a “productive day.” That is on the money. However, if I work nonstop, I start to lose my sense of purpose. What is it all for? What’s the point? This is how depression sets in. Thus, my philosophy is: “Work hard, play hard.”
Making time for friends is crucial to mental and emotional well-being. This is why, even though I could save the hours to work, when someone wants to get coffee, grab a meal, or catch a movie, I do my best to say “yes.” We have to stop and smell the roses! To buy a bottle of wine at Trader Joe’s on a Sunday night and pass a few hours talking about what’s on our minds. Add to that, if your entire life is focused on you and what you can accomplish, it becomes a pretty hollow and draining existence. Focusing on other people, how you can serve and love them, is extremely good for you!
Where my introverts at? I see you. I am one of you. Yes, I am. Time alone is vital to my mental sanity. The snippier and needier I get, the more I need alone time. I have learned to block out a good chunk every week to just be with my own company. Julia Cameron calls this the “Artist’s Date.” Make plans to take yourself out: go to the movies, an art museum, or for a hike. Go on an adventure outside your daily norm. Frankly, even a quiet night in totally by yourself will do. Without fail, I find these trips ground me; allow me to hear my own voice, and remember who I am. If I forget who I am, I don’t have much to offer the world.
Learn You: Flexibility
These are the principles and habits I have built my life around to keep me from breaking down into a nervous wreck, keep me moving forward toward my goals, and keep me enjoying the one life I’ve been given. We all have to discover, through trial and error, what our bodies need. Each of us was made differently, and so the trick, I believe, is learning YOU.
Once you know how you best work, the demands on your life, and the dreams you are chasing, I recommend making a list of these “tent pole” needs and standards. The key, I’ve found, is flexibility. If I demand a rigid structure, the whole operation comes crashing down because I will fail in the first couple of hours of the day. Instead, have realistic standards for what you can accomplish during the day, prioritize the most important, and trust that there will be time later to finish the other goals. We are living organisms, not machines. This means we’re constantly evolving, and so we need to be flexible and gracious with ourselves.
But let’s be honest: that’s so much more interesting. Isn’t it?
Adventure Awaits,
~ S. C. Durbois
S. C. Durbois Newsletter
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Well said! Encouraging read