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Audacity Works
Audacity Works
Podcast Buffet: All the episode suggestions I can't fill 20 minutes with!
This is a little Q&A episode where I address 8 different podcast/subject requests from listeners. I thought these requests were great questions that I wanted to answer, but I didn't feel I had 20 minutes worth of material to address each one.
Do enjoy the buffet. xo
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xoRachel
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Welcome to Audacity Works, a podcast inspired by and dedicated to the working artist, the creative entrepreneur and generally doing the damn thing. This exists on the premise that the world belongs to those who have the audacity to believe that their lives have value. This is for you. Welcome to Audacity Works. I am your host, rachel Strickland, and this is episode number 38. This is going to be a little bit of a different episode. This is basically a Q&A, because when I first started this podcast I asked for episode recommendations and I got a whole bunch of them and they're on a list that I have been using and kind of pairing off one at a time, also adding my own ideas to that list. Frankly, there are a lot that are great questions, but I don't have enough material to devote 20 minutes to them, so I just figured I would go through the list and address some of these questions altogether. So we're going to do a little Q&A today. So no one subject to today's episode, but many subjects to today's episode. So let's just go ahead and get started. First question is from JPG. What's up JPG? and she asked me what does it mean to live audaciously?
Speaker 1:Let's start with the definition of this word. My love affair with the word audacity began from a young age, and its literal definition is boldness or daring, especially with confident or arrogant disregard for personal safety, conventional thought or other restrictions. It is known as effrontery or insolence shameless boldness. I am on board for all of these things, except for the disregard for personal safety. That part I don't superjive so much. But definitely disregard for conventional thought, disregard for other restrictions shameless boldness. Anything that allows you to live your life with these qualities is going to be a good thing, in my opinion. When I discovered that I was capable of taking action on these qualities and myself, i was so delighted and continued to be delighted. So I've continued to seek it out, and the reason that I ended up calling it the audacity project is a little bit of a tiny story. So I was speaking with a friend in the community, in the aerial community, and she was talking about another person that was in the community. This person was audacious and she would just go out, do whatever she wanted, without any regard to whether or not she belonged there or was of a high enough skill level to try out for this thing or that thing, which, of course, are all things that I encourage people to do, and my friend that was. It made the friend that I was speaking with feel insecure And she said I don't want to say that she has the audacity to be doing this. And I'm like, no, that's exactly what she has. She has the audacity and she should. It's great. You should totally have some more audacity And that is why I ended up calling my flagship program the audacity project.
Speaker 1:If you're new, you don't know what the audacity project is. It's an eight week online guided process in which I take around 20 artists and equip them with the tools necessary to be working professionals. So what does it mean to live audaciously? Be shameless in your boldness and have disregard for conventional thought and other things that want to squish you into something more convenient for them. Be inconvenient. Be audacious.
Speaker 1:Next question is from Mira. She says I often wonder to the extent to which my aerial career is limited by my inability to do the splits. I don't know if that constitutes an entire episode, but just thinking of existential crises, other aerialists might share that uh, that aren't necessarily already covered. So, yeah, this is a whole thing And there are definitely, like, some opportunities that would be closed to you if you don't have the splits. However, the way that I like to reframe looking at this particular experience is to tell artists to look at male aerialists, and pretty much every time I have offered this perspective shift, it had never been considered before. They're like, wait what? And I'm like, yeah, you see male aerialists that don't have the splits and they're out working and doing all of the things, like, yeah, but I'm not a man. I'm like, i know, but that doesn't mean that you can't use your power, your innovation, your movement quality in the same way that they do to be working and doing all kinds of cool shit. I'll also add that your value in this culture is not limited to how well you can imitate some ephemeral ideal that is probably put there, you know, by ourselves. I mean, we were groomed for it, of course, but will there be some choreographic moments and sequences that aren't available to you if you don't have the flexibility to be able to do the splits? Yes, of course, just like there are lots of sequences and choreographic moments that aren't going to be accessible to people because of different kinds of physical limits. And I want to tie this up by saying I know a super successful contortionist who has worked more than almost anyone I know, and she can't do a pike. So everybody has limitations and everybody also has other gifts that they can be using. So be focusing on those things that you can do. There is a place for you, there is work for you.
Speaker 1:Okay, next question from a good friend, shannon McKenna, totally calling it, calling her out, and she said how about interviews with people who call you crying, like me, which sounds like a lot of fun. So what I have decided is that I'm going to do a year at least of the podcast, just the way that I have been delivering it, which is around 20 minutes per episode, just me myself. And this is for a lot of reasons. One is to develop a relationship with this platform and also to establish some good habits and kind of get my jive down. And after doing this for a year and we're already on episode number 37, so that's not very far away I may introduce some guest episodes, so stay tuned. Okay, next question from my excuse me, yep, gonna leave that in. It's a human moment from my friend, meredith. She said Can you speak to any artists who insist on living and working in 3D only, as in refusing the social media slash content creation obsession.
Speaker 1:I've known Meredith a long time and I know this about her that she's never enjoyed being educated online like she craves and really does well with face to face connection, as I think a lot of us do, and she's just kind of like putting our foot down and refusing to engage in being in an online world. So two answers to this question. Can I speak to it? Not really, because I love having a hybrid experience of face to face and an online world. So I don't have the lived experience of refusing to operate online and like insisting on only operating in the three dimensional. But do I think it's possible? Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. I think it's possible.
Speaker 1:And if this sounds like appealing to you, my advice here would be to first set some really strong boundaries around what it is that that you can do and can't do without harming your sense of well-being. Like it will be difficult to work if you won't check your email. But if that falls within the realm of the acceptable, then cool. Like we can have an email, that's fine. But if you are wanting to be very insistent on only working in the three dimensional, location is going to be everything You will need to be in a place where you can work, a place where it's possible for you to have lots of face-to-face relationships with other people that are in the culture with you and in the community with you. So if you only want to work in 3D, location is going to be everything And you're going to want to brush off your interpersonal skills because that's the thing that you're going to be using to get all of your work and to make all of your relationships Okay. next question This is from Allison, the Aerial Nomad.
Speaker 1:Thanks, allison, and she asked for book reviews. Now, book reviews kind of like the thought of giving a book review puts me in a very book report kind of headspace, which was never something I was super fond of when I was in school. Now I realized early on in my education and I got my bachelor's degree in creative writing like, okay, i'm a writer but I'm definitely not a journalist, i don't want to be a journalist, and so that kind of like spans into that realm. I don't feel like I would be very good at it. However, i can give you a list of what I would consider required reading for every artist. Recommendation number one War of Art by Stephen Pressfield. I think that this should be required reading because of the experience I had while reading it. I've read it several times And I can't recommend reading it before bed because it just makes me want to get up and write so badly. So what I call gremlins in creative process Stephen Pressfield refers to as resistance, and it's the same thing. And if you read it you may recognize a lot of your own experience, and I found it very uplifting and also very stark and honest and super motivating. So War of Art, recommendation number one.
Speaker 1:Number two The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron. It's a classic. I avoided it, like a lot of you, for a really long time. I would like pick it up, i would try to go through the 12-week exercises and then I would inevitably drift off or get distracted or something. And it wasn't until I did it with a friend, and this of course, happened early in the pandemic. Shannon McKenna was like, hey, do you want to go through The Artist's Way with me? And we can like have a Zoom call every week, and we're like, yes, and then that is when I finally did all 12 weeks And it was great. I don't resonate with absolutely everything in the book, but I do recommend it. I don't think you need to resonate with everything for a book to be super valuable. If you can even get one idea from a book, then it was worth the money And I got many, many good nuggets of wisdom from going through The Artist's Way. Recommendation number three The Passion by Jeanette Winterson.
Speaker 1:I love Jeanette Winterson. This is not a self-help book kind of like. The other two are sort of in the vein of self-help. The Passion is a novel and it is written so deliciously, so tasty, like you want to just pick it up, cut off a piece and start chewing on it. But the writing is just so good. So if you've been looking for a good read, that's a. That's just fun. Tasty, delicious. Read The Passion. Let me know how you like it.
Speaker 1:Okay, next question from my friend Cake How do you do when you feel like you just can't? Honestly, i don't, not that I don't feel that way. I feel that way frequently. How do you do when you feel like you just can't? If I feel like I just can't, then I don't, because that means I'm burnt out and you can't get unburnt out by doing more things. So typically it means that for me I need to rest and have a nothing day and literally do nothing productive. So if you feel like I can't I generally don't Now, if this is something that is happening to you very frequently, then that could be a systemic issue.
Speaker 1:Might want to look at how your life is organized. Might want to consider like I don't know, it could be clinical, it could be depressive. So having a day every now and then where you're like I just know I can't, i'm not doing today, i'm taking it that I think that's fine And I think that that's pretty natural because we're not built for the lifestyle that most of us are living. But if it's happening a lot, then it's probably gonna start to have a bigger impact on you And we could look at that with a wider lens and ask what? what is something that is big, that could be changed? that's not going to be healed by just having a day off. But for a piece of advice that's a little more actionable than take a day off And that's really specific to the question how do you do when you feel like you just can't, trying to do activities that are actually refurbishing instead of just nothing box?
Speaker 1:Nothing box is what me and Man Flesh refer to as like Netflix and chill, i mean, you're not doing anything. It is relaxing, but it's not replenishing. It's nice because your brain is is not really working of its own accord. Working of its own accord, it's relying on someone else's work and it's just sort of along for the ride and that feels good and relaxing, but it's not replenishing. And trying to think of replenishing activities when you're already depleted in an estate where you feel like you just can't, isn't a great time to try and come up with those things. So I do recommend having a list, like an actual list written down, of activities that you find replenishing. So when you're in that burnt out state and you feel like you just can't, you'll have that list there, because you're not really in any kind of shape to be inventing replenishing activities when you're already burnt out.
Speaker 1:Next question It's not really a question but it's from my friend Tink. She says I would buy your bio in book or other form, just saying and, tink, you've no idea what that means to me. I just I appreciate you. Thank you so much. Next question This comes from Kaisu What do you do if you're a performing artist and want people to see your work?
Speaker 1:but performing in front of an audience causes a lot of anxiety and stress And there's a high chance that it goes so much worse than it would if I could perform it alone without anyone seeing. And isn't this just such a conundrum? the whole experience of being an artist and wanting to share your work, wanting people to see your work But not wanting to be seen and being seen feels like shit. My first thought here was not really my best thought, but I'll share it anyway. My first thought was that you could create for recorded media, like video. You could. You could create for film, but I still don't think that's a very good answer because There's gonna come a time where you have to be in front of the crew and the camera filming and you're still gonna feel that same amount of anxiety and stress. So it's not. It's more like hiding than it is really facing the issue. So my real and genuine opinion here is that if you want to be a performing artist, you want people to see your work, you want to share your work, but you feel a lot of stress and anxiety.
Speaker 1:Exposure therapy is my advice If this is the experience that you're having, this stress and anxiety that comes with you know. Basically, it's stage fright, super well documented and, as far as I know the only way to get over it is exposure therapy, just by doing the thing. So my advice, if you're experiencing crippling stage fright and it feels terrible, is to put yourself on stage as often as possible and to make that your primary objective. Maybe take six to twelve months and for that six to twelve months, your primary objective is not to make money I mean, be fair to yourself and do good practices, blah, blah, blah, all that stuff but the primary objective here is not to make the most money ever. It's to get on stage as many times as possible, as much as possible. There's no, in my opinion, there's no way around that being the most effective advice that I can give you Get the two as many stages as often as possible.
Speaker 1:Also, while I do want you to challenge yourself and I do want you to experience productive discomfort, i don't want you to be traumatized. So I think it's worth adding in here to practice some nervous system hygiene. Nervous system hygiene just creates a healthy relationship between you and your nervous system, so that you're not necessarily just sort of like waiting to see what it does to you because you have, there are tools that you can use to soothe your nervous system, because your nervous system just wants you to be safe and if it thinks you're not safe, then it's going to send you all these messages and it's going to suck. But practicing nervous system hygiene can be super useful when you're working through the challenges of stage fright. I do have a resource for that. It's called Stress School. We held it in May, i believe, and it was. I hosted JPG of Brain Body Resilience And we did a two hour webinar Chalk Full of Information and Tools that you can use, and I will put that link in the show notes so that, if you're interested, it's there for you. So if you could use some education around nervous system hygiene, check out Stress School. I think it's 25 bucks USD for lifetime access to the two hour webinar. So it's there for you if you want it.
Speaker 1:All right, my friends, looking at the time, i'm going to wrap this up. I want to thank you for being here and thank you to everyone who wrote in to me with these questions. I worked through a great deal of the list. I've been sitting here looking at this list for a while like God. I really want to answer these questions, but I don't have like 20 minutes worth of thoughts around it, so just decided to do this, and I'll probably do it again in the future. So that means that I have a lot more room for more podcast episode requests, so if you have them, don't be shy. You can find me on Instagram at Rachel Strickland Creative, or on Patreon at Rachel Strickland Creative. An extra special thank you to my patrons, without whom I could not do this and a lot of other things that I do, so thank you. Thank you for being here. May your day and your life and your July be shamelessly bold. Don't go back to sleep.