It is always the right time for a fresh start.

 Kevin Gupana
April 29, 2021

A few days ago, a friend of mine sent me an Instagram post of affirmations. Two quotes really stood out to me:

“Dishonoring my boundaries to avoid conflict and discomfort is no longer an option.”

and…

“It is always the right time for a fresh start.”

While much of the world has been working from home or asked to extend their efforts further than what they’ve previously done in order to make things work, the natural boundaries that have been created in our lives have been blurred or even destroyed. Without being physically in the office many of us have felt the expectation to “make things work”. Working from home has allowed people to tell themselves, “I’ll just work an extra 15 minutes to finish this one task.” But when that extra 15 minutes becomes an hour, we step away from our computers feeling more exhausted. (I say step away, rather than walk away VERY much on purpose!)

As musicians, these boundaries have been confused and under question for much longer than that. Between lessons, rehearsals, or the practice room (whether that be the practice rooms in school or our very own bedrooms), musicians are asked to live and breathe the artform. This has gone so far that many of us deal with the cultural expectation that if you’re not sacrificing some part of yourself to meet those expectations you’re not doing enough. Toxic productivity, which was also covered so beautifully by Ali Hoffman’s guest blog post here, is something that many of us battle in the music world, and something many more of us are facing while working from home.

During my undergraduate studies while dedicating hours of time in the reed room and practice room, I often texted my friends to ask them, “It’s okay for me to take a break, right?” or “I’ve been in x hours of rehearsal today, and my brain is fried, I should take a break, right?” I would be working on an etude or driving myself crazy over a reed problem that I just NEEDED to fix. Or I would be on hour seven of rehearsals for that day, without any time for personal practice, yet feel like I had to put more hours in. I would need to justify the boundary I was creating for myself, but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. My friends would often say, “Yes, Kevin, that would be a healthy decision,” but I would still often feel wrong in stepping back for myself thinking I would lose progress.

I learned about this lesson the hard way at a festival a few years ago. I was playing principal oboe on Pictures at an Exhibition by Modest Mussorgsky. There is a WICKED solo in one of the movements titled. “Tuileries”. It was perfect in preparation for our seating auditions. When it came to rehearsals, however, I played it great the first time, but TOTALLY fell on my face when the conductor decided to take it much faster than originally marked. This frightened me, and after every rehearsal I would spend hours practicing the solo to make sure I would get it right. But this solo NEVER worked in rehearsal.

I distinctly remember locking myself in the practice room for hours, thinking that only practicing this solo for a week would fix this issue. At one point, my friend, whose practice room was next to mine, knocked on my door and said, “Kevin, you’ve been playing this solo perfectly over the last few days in the practice room. I know it’s scary in rehearsal, but have you thought about stepping away and doing something else? Let’s go get a coffee. That might just be the exact thing that you need to let your brain settle!” The thought of taking a break frightened me. I was so focused on this solo that the thought of stepping away from the practice room would ruin any practice I had done up to that point. Ultimately, a fresh start was the exact thing I needed to approach that solo well. Had I built that boundary between myself and the practice room, the discomfort of starting anew would have helped my learning and mastering this wicked solo.

This is a consistent problem in the music community. Yes, it’s important to push ourselves to our limits. But we shouldn’t expect ourselves to make jumps larger than what we are mentally and physically capable of doing. A runner whose mile personal record is 8 minutes would not be expected to make their personal record 7 minutes in a week. That’s much larger than what they are physically capable of in a week. Too often, we see many colleagues put lofty expectations on themselves, and we don’t often see them respecting the space that will allow them to develop, thrive, and be healthy both mentally and physically. 

At one point, honoring your boundaries so you can sit in the discomfort and conflict of “what’s not working” could be the difference between a huge practice breakthrough and sitting stagnant. Honoring your boundaries and stepping away for proper self-care allows you to heal and process the hard work you are doing in the practice room or even in the office. Really, it is ALWAYS the right time for a fresh start. That way, you can look at what you’re doing from a fresh perspective.