Your Reminder to Rest
Your reminder to rest. 🌙
I hope you’re keeping well. I don’t know about everyone else, but it feels like this year has gone at 100mph so far - I’ve been feeling pretty burnt out.
I know that I struggle with taking on too much, and forgetting to rest. I rarely feel properly recharged, and feel guilty for taking time ‘off’, especially because there’s such a pressure in the music industry to constantly churn out new music and content (and, subsequently, to earn enough money in the day job to invest your own music, as it’s such a money-losing field).
I remember when being played on the radio last year that someone said, with kind intent, that it had been a very long time since they’d heard new music from me. My heart dropped - I knew it had been ages since I’d released anything new, but it wasn’t a deliberate break - it had taken me years to save up financially to independently make the new album, and a pandemic cutting almost all of my day-job hours to give me the time to write it.
I also spent this time learning how to build a better website, improve the business aspects of my work, become my own promoter, and to record and co-produce music from home. But I still felt anxious that it had been so long, and worried that people might think that my heart hadn’t been in it.
There’s also an undertone, especially as a woman, that you have a limited time to really ‘make it’ before you get ‘too old’, or decide have a family. I try to ignore this pressure, but it niggles.
Because of this, I’m currently in a little cocoon period where I don’t have any gigs booked for a while and, instead, am taking some time to work on some behind-the-scenes stuff (keep an eye out for updates!), and the songwriting that makes me so happy, as well as taking some time for personal things - WHO plans a wedding in 6 months?!
I love this photo by the lovely and talented Jessie's Whimsical Photography from a shoot we did lately, with make up by the amazing artistrybyben. A moment of calm.
Lots of love to everyone, and please take this as a reminder to rest and not feel guilty about it.
Big love,
Jenny xx