learn to relax Archives

Earlier this week I wrote an article on why people in the entertainment industry often struggle to disengage from work when they are trying to relax. I do not want to rehash the whole piece, but the basic idea is that we connect all forms of entertainment with work, which means we take everything we enjoy and filter through things like business, money, etc.

There are admittedly far larger problems in the world right now than the relaxation of entertainment professionals. That said, we all have to choose our battles in life, and this one happens to be something I can help you conquer. My approach is simple, but it will take some adjustment to make it suit your needs and lifestyle.

Here it is: Find something to obsess over that you would never need to apply to your work.

This is harder than it sounds, but it can be done. You love a million things about entertainment. I know this because you’ve chosen to try and make a living in a field everyone tells you not to try and make a living in. You love of entertainment runs deep, and somewhere in that love is a thing you can separate from the rest as your personal slice of heaven.

Let me give you an example, and this is 100% true:

When I need to unwind and escape the worries of the week I seek to find and purchase every film the actor Nicolas Cage has ever made on DVD or Blu-ray.

You may think this would easy in the age of digital access, but I have a rule that I cannot use sites like Amazon or eBay to find his work. The only way I can buy the films of Nicolas Cage – all 86 of them – is through purchases made in the real world. I have to buy the films brand new in store, which is only possible for a small number of titles, or find them through garage sales, pawn shops, flea markets, and the few remaining video stores scattered throughout the United States.

The adventure, which I have dubbed ‘Cage Quest,’ may sound silly to you. To be honest, it sounds silly to me, but when I am working on this project I am not thinking about my email. I am not thinking about whether or not I can apply what I’m learning or doing to my job in some way. I’m not trying to turn my hobby into a new work thing and that is kind of a first for me.

Furthermore, my personal Cage Quest gets me out of my house and into the real world where I am able to experience corners of culture that have largely fallen by the wayside in recent years. The majority of the films I buy are previously used, meaning at some point they meant something special to the original owner or that they theoretically entertained dozens of families through their life on a rental shelf. The discs themselves have stories and legacies, and that is kind of fascinating to me.

My quest has become such a staple of my free time that even my family has gotten involved. Finding and exploring used video stores has become something of a tradition for us, and with each film we find we also have a movie night at our home where I am able to join them in simply losing myself in the story on screen. Those are the moments I treasure most because they remind me of why I started this journey in entertainment in the first place. I was a fan first and I always will be, which I am reminded of whenever I am able to shake the worries of work and just enjoy the work of others.

Will my Cage Quest work for you? Probably not, but that is the point I was making when I said it is a little harder to find something to obsess over than you would think. Nicolas Cage is an actor I have always admired, but it wasn’t until I found myself sifting through used DVDs at a random pawn shop one day that I thought to begin seeking out his whole catalog. It was an idea that came to me out of the blue, like a million others I have every day, but for some reason it stuck with me. I thought it sounded like fun, and perhaps more importantly like something no one else I knew would ever think to attempt. I knew Cage Quest could be my ‘thing’ and my thing alone, which in turn made it special.

If you’re reading this now I urge you to find something similar in your life. Think of the things you love and look for a unique way to enjoy it. If everyone else thinks you’re a little crazy, who cares? If it makes you happy and gives you a brief escape from the worries of the work week that is all that really matters.

James Shotwell is the Marketing Coordinator for Haulix. He is also the Film Editor for Substream Magazine, host of the Inside Music podcast, and ten-year music writing veteran. For more stories and nonsense, follow James on Twitter.

Every music writer today, regardless of experience or genre preference, deals with stress on a daily basis. Whether you’re fretting over the quality of content posted, the happiness of your fellow staff, the happiness of your readers, or worried you may have simply not posted enough, there seems to always be something worth losing sleep over. At least, that is how we see things. Writers, just like site owners, have a big problem with internalizing every single thing that could possibly frustrate them and never taking the time to actually deal with any of it. We just keep going, day in and day out, with the hope that one day we will feel the increasingly heavy weights on our shoulders being lifted off. We don’t know when that will happen, and most probably couldn’t tell you a single scenario where they would actually be able to stop stressing for good, but it’s a lie that has helped countless creatives push through and it will continue to serve its purpose for the foreseeable future.

Having spent nearly a decade of my life writing, it wasn’t until I had already put five years of hard work in that I really began to notice the impact stress and its constant presence in my life took on everyday existence. My brain had rewired itself over time to revolve around the internet and what I saw as the time of day when posting ‘must’ happen. The first thing I thought about when I woke up was whether or not any headlines had broke while I was asleep, and the last thing I did before bed last night was a scroll through my RSS feed for any late breaking headlines. “If I could just be on top of the next story,” I thought. “Then I will be satisfied.”

What I eventually realized, and what I still struggle with today, is that there is no true end point for creative people. Our drive to create content the world enjoys will never be satiated with a single post, or even a single day’s worth of great content. Our pursuit is one that seeks for to create high quality work over an extended period of time, and no amount of day-to-day success is ever going to subdue that desire. The best we can do is learn to live with our drive rather than letting it rule over us, and that begins by learning to relax. I know that may sound like a foreign concept to many writers reading this now, but it’s true. If you cannot relax then you cannot create your best work, and if that happens that constant itch to create something truly great will slowly begin to eat you alive.

Before your passion gets the best of you, use the tips below to shake off the stress of creating content and find what I assume I probably some much needed rest. You deserve it.

It’s never a bad idea to have a plan. In fact, it’s a damn good idea.

I wish someone had told me when I was just starting out that life as a writer is 100x easier when you have a plan. More specifically, life is easier when you have a content calendar that outlines every major feature and piece of content you will need to create in the next several weeks, as well as the deadlines to complete each item. Doing this periodically makes it easier to plan your day-to-day work load, which in turn lowers your stress. You know what needs to be done, when it needs to be done, and exactly how much time you have to get everything accomplished. For added help, I suggest making daily to-do lists as well. I use Asana to make mine, but you can use whatever works best for you.

Even if you have a plan, be careful not to take on too much at once.

When I first started making calendars and to-do lists I thought it best to try and see just how many things I could accomplish on any given day. I would make lists with twenty or thirty tasks, and anything left incomplete at the end of the day would be the first thing tackled the following morning. What I didn’t realize at the time, and what I hope to save you from now, is that leaving so many tasks unfinished made it impossible for my mind to fully shutdown at the end of the day. Whenever I wanted to get up from my desk and walk away I would see them, mocking me from the page, and I would feel as if I had somehow failed myself by leaving them incomplete. Sometimes this forced me to stay up late, cranking away on subpar content because at least it would be completed, but other times I would walk away online to find the need to do more work keeping me up at night. No one was telling me I wasn’t doing enough other than myself, but that was the only voice I needed to hear to feel inadequate.

Educate yourself

The more you know about how the independent music and digital journalism world works, the better prepared you’ll be to conquer it. This is the entire reason the Haulix blog you’re reading right now even exists: Education. Every member of our staff learned about the industry through trial and error. No one held our hand or showed us what to do. We simply woke up every morning and dedicated ourselves to improving what little skills we had and in time things slowly began to improve. Looking back now we realize that was the hard way to learn about life in music, so we created this blog to make life in music easier for future generations.

Step away from the laptop. Put down your phone. Walk outside. Breathe.

Chronic stress is the response to emotional pressure suffered for a prolonged period over which an individual perceives he or she has no control. This is a good way to explain how most writers feel in the digital age. We know we can create great content given time and space, but there is a constant demand from the world at large to produce more and more content and it’s easy to perceive that cry for posts as a call that must be answered. After all, it’s because of our readers that we creatives have a purpose in the first place.

Before you can give your readers what they need you must first care for your own well being. Planning and organizing will get you far, but in order to truly shake off the stress and worries of life in writing you need to disconnect. You need to close your laptop, put your phone in ‘airplane’ mode, step outside, and breathe. Take a walk, take a nap, catch a movie (that you don’t review), or call a friend and catch up. Find something that has nothing to do with your writing and let it be the only thing you focus on for a period of time. Your mind needs time to rest, just like your body. You can only push yourself so far before your work will begin to suffer, and if you continue to push beyond that point things will only go from bad to worse for everyone involved. Trust me – it’s okay to unplug. Just do it.

James Shotwell is the Marketing Coordinator for Haulix. He is also a professional entertainment critic, covering both film and music, as well as the co-founder of Antique Records. Feel free to tell him you love or hate the article above by connecting with him on Twitter. Bonus points if you introduce yourself by sharing your favorite Simpsons character.