At least once a week an article will come across my desktop with a title along the lines of "7 Ways to Live a Healthier Lifestyle" or "Enhance Your Wellbeing". They all are very well intentioned and are all vaguely similar. However I have discovered that being a grad student (or actually being in theatre in general) tends to counteract every one of the core ideas these articles boast. For example:
1. Stop eating late at night
Sure. We could do that. But that also sometimes means that your next meal won't be until 14 hours after your last one and you have been working hard as opposed to enjoying a relaxing evening at home.
2. Get at least 7 or 8 hours of sleep a night.
When your rehearsal ends at 11, you have post-rehearsal work until midnight, and you still have to do homework because you've been in class since 9:00 and you have class at 9:00 the next day, the math just doesn't add up to sleeping the number of hours you should.
3. Exercise frequently.
I love this. I know we would all love to do this all the time. But the answer for the previous question is also relevant to this one. Sometimes there literally aren't hours in the day.
4. Eat organic food.
Also one that we would all love to do all the time but sometimes our budgets just really don't allow for it. Sometimes it's not even a matter of priority; it's a matter of "how much can I spend this week and still pay rent".
5. Get plenty of fresh air
Sorry, that wasn't on my class or rehearsal schedule. Maybe next semester.
6. Let go of stress
I'm sure this is possible for some people but when you're put in a highly stressful environment like graduate school (or theatre in general which many people forget is just playing, not life and death), the pressure follows you around. You are often responsible for the success of many rather than just yourself.
7. Wake up early every day to get a jump start on the day and go to sleep early to be well rested
We wake up early because we have to and when we have the chance to sleep later than 7:00 am, believe me we're going to do it. It's a little bit like finals week in college where you don't sleep much for a week and spend the next two weeks sleeping in to recover. That's called Monday mornings in the theatre world (or Sundays, for those of us at YSD).
8. Read the news to keep yourself informed and educated
I have to have the news sent me to via email to force myself to know what's going on and even then I can only skim the headlines.
9. Never eat processed foods or eat out
That might mean we never eat
10. Take time to yourself
Do you mean the 10 minutes in bed before you conk out?
These are all ideas I have struggled with for years. Recently I have integrated most if not all of these habits into my schedule, though I may never consistently sleep more than 6 hours a night or have a stress free life. Given that I have had enough free time in the past month to fully establish their existence in my daily routine, I wonder how long I can keep them up since I will soon be giving my life back to rehearsal and performance life. And it seriously makes me wonder how we can expect ourselves or ask ourselves to be healthier, happier, more well rounded human beings when grad school/theatre so clearly contradict it.
The argument can always be made that life is about priorities and if one makes this a priority, it can happen. I am living proof that one can slowly integrate these elements into her life but the thought that lingers concerns my ability to commit to it once my life returns to my baseline normal. Will I still be willing to rise a full hour and a half before my first morning commitment to have a rejuvenating start to the day? Can I still commit the extra money each week to buying only organic foods when I won't have workstudy again until November? Will I still have the energy and/or time to dance for an hour every night? I can only hope. But my bigger hope is that my peers and colleagues find ways to integrate these into their lives as well. What good will it be if I'm feeling great but the people around me are feeling awful?
I don't have the answers to these questions. I wish I did but grad school and theatre are specific beasts that take a special kind of commitment and perseverance and a strong sense of self to get through. If you think that theatre practitioners are soft or weak in any way, that would be a mistake. They have to be strong enough to find that balance in their lives without compromising too much on either side.
Hopefully this year we can all find a way to strike a better balance in our lives. Because at the end of the three years here and at the end of our careers many years down the line, we all would like to say that we not only survived but that we thrived as well.
No comments:
Post a Comment