Working Hard, Making Art

This is really a follow up to my post from last week, and sheds a little light on where my brain is this week.

I work hard, and most of the people in my life who I love and respect work hard too. I don’t feel bad about this, and I only rarely feel like my work is ‘getting in the way’ of my life. My work is my prayer, my work is my life, and I am lucky enough to work doing what I love. Like many people, I want to be excellent in the things that I do (athletic activities being the exception – in that area I’ll settle for being competent).

Last week when I was plowing through what was my 2nd or 3rd rehearsal of the day, I heard another singer who was singing a short phrase with great artistry and freshness, and I thought: I want that. I knew that at that moment if I had been asked to sing a phrase on my own I couldn’t have been as artistic as that because I was too worn out, and that shamed me. When my diligence gets in the way of making art, all is lost. It’s not worth beating myself up in the practice room if it means that I will be fried once it’s time to really sing.

To all my fellow pluggers out there: just because our labor threshold is higher than other’s doesn’t mean that we have a limitless capacity for work. Eventually the scales tip and our hard work stops being an asset to our living well and starts to be a threat.