I am in Las Vegas this week. Well technically Henderson, Nevada. Not here for fun. Here for work. Work with joyous cool people who are building something cool in the music industry – my industry – my core area of expertise. It really has been exciting and exhausting but mostly exciting. I have a huge contract due tonight for one of my artists who is now signing to this new label – a company with so much promise, so much counterweight to social injustice – more than I can explain now. The kind of company that gives me a reason to get up in the morning.
But that’s not what I wanted to share. Anyone who knows me knows my life centers around helping creative people; musical artists, producers, directors, photographers, writers, and musicians; they are all the loves of my life. I love to say I married my bass player and we grew our own guitar player. This truth is also reflective of my love of creatives.
But what about love of myself. I always put myself last. Maybe it’s a female thing. We tend to sacrifice for our families and others as part of our nurturing side. Maybe it’s the need for validation from others from a fucked up childhood. Giving until I am exhausted has always been my signature failure. Rarely do I make room for me.
The challenge is bandwidth and trying not to give so much of me to other creative people that I lose sight of taking care of myself and my own creativity. Some of these folks have actually turned out to be spiritual vampires sucking the life out of me. Others are well meaning but the relationship is not reciprocal and as much as my natural self is to give give give, bleeding to death is a terrible way to go. I am always having to re-examine the question of where am I in this relationship?
So it has become time to make room and so comes the culling. This is for sanity. This is for saving money on people who don’t give back. This is for letting go of fixing other people’s messes. This is for carving time for my own art with new music coming. This is for getting more sleep. This is especially for reducing my stress that has utterly affected my health to the point where I am dealing with some pretty major shit….again.
And so the culling has started and I have no regrets. Saying what I need to people who never gave back during the relationship has revealed their true colors. All these folks and their projects had to go. It’s a purging of epic proportions. Epic really and truly helping me find me again.
So universe, thank you for revealing this latest round of spiritual vampires and YAY to me for saying to people what I need from them and simply just saying no rather than bleed to death.
And to those who give to me unconditionally, I never ever want to be that taker that loses sight of balance in all things and all relationships so tell me what you need because balance is everything.