This is for my workaholics.
I moved to New York City with a clear purpose—to become a full-time musical theatre performer. While there are certainly many ways to find yourself in a paying musical theatre gig, the most common way is, obviously, to attend as many viable musical theatre auditions as possible! Hone your talent, meet casting directors, get cast! For many actors, the familiar struggle is that these auditions tend to be during weekday, daytime, typical work, 9 to 5, hours. For me, this underlined just how important it is that my schedule remains flexible so that I could attend as many auditions as possible.
And you know what? That’s exactly what I did. I began my newfound working life in NYC working sideline careers that are scheduled primarily on nights and weekends, and I did that for those next consecutive 15 years!
In many ways, it was ideal! I didn’t have the same schedule each week so, therefore, my schedule was new and interesting each week. I loved that. I was simply waiting for the next job offer from employers to let me know when I might be working next. Some weeks, I only had one job. The next week, I would have a stretch where I would work 12 days in a row! Some shifts were only 5 hours. Others were 14 hours, not including the drive to and from the location. I didn’t lack variety, that’s for sure!
About 3 years into this lifestyle, I flew home to Texas for Thanksgiving, allowing me the opportunity to visit with some dear hometown friends. We would meet at one of their apartments and catch up. I would ask what it was like to be in a “real” working profession. I would share how the “big city” is treating me. We would laugh about how crazy life is and how old we’re getting. During one of these get togethers, I distinctly remember a moment when my friend said, “I’m going away for the weekend.”
💡
Wow. A weekend.
It was like someone thunked me on the head with a mallet. 🔨
After 3 years of a consistently non-predictable schedule, it hit me then that I didn’t have a weekend anymore. But what was most striking about this is that I allowed this to happen. No one had forced me to give up my weekends. I had chosen this, but for good reason: I wanted to be a performer!
But it didn’t have to be this way! I value time for myself. I want to live a little bit more like the rest of the world. And I deserved time off too! From that moment forward, I decided, you know what? I’m going to give myself Sundays off. No working allowed. And I did just that. I drew a firm boundary in my life to move myself closer to my best life.
To this day, I would mark that was one of the best decisions I have ever made. Not only did I have a guaranteed day of no responsibility, but I was a better employee. I was a better entrepreneur. I had something to look forward to and a pause. And, as a result, I felt better. Even more impressive (and unexpected), I made more money as a result of this change!
More well rested = felt better = better performance = better reviews = more job opportunities = higher pay = 💰💰💰. That was the bonus I couldn’t have predicted!
Are you overworking? Here’s a clue: do you have two weekend days each week where you do not work?
We could make an effort to guess, but there truly is no predicting what changes can happen if you prioritize yourself first. Give yourself space to breathe. Draw a line in the sand. Say no to others so you can say yes to yourself.
Some questions to think about here:
Where in your life are you not drawing boundaries with your time?
What are you willing to say no to in order to say yes to yourself?
What are the benefits of doing this?
My challenge to you: take off two full days each week. No work obligations. Collect the data.
