A Musical Balancing Act
/My name is Maia, and I hoard jobs. I’ve come to recognize this compulsion over twenty years as a musician. It’s been a wild ride so far. I’m now 41, and very much mid-career. While I still benefit from the guidance of mentors, I find myself graduating into that role for others.
Last month, Salastina held a mini-residency at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music through their Professional Development and Engagement Center. (It was a blast; topics ranged from audience and community building to starting your own nonprofit to navigating the studio scene.) In November, I was a guest speaker on “Work/Life Integration” at the Dallas Symphony’s Women in Classical Music Symposium. More and more, our Sounds Promising Young Artists Program focuses on the personal mentorship aspect; as one might imagine, career concerns are front-of-mind for musicians on the cusp of their careers.
Now feels like a good time to consolidate and share my thoughts around “life as a musician.” I share because, increasingly, others have asked me to. And I hope doing so here will help more.
What this post is not: a prescription. Not everyone is coming from the same place as I do – in terms of either personality or privilege.
That being said, younger musicians I’ve had the pleasure of speaking with have expressed that they’ve benefited most when I’ve shared specific details from my experience. While the below is quite personal to me (both emotionally and literally), I share it in the hope that others may extrapolate something relevant and valuable to them.
About 6 years ago, I had a rather harrowing come-to-Jesus moment around my tendency to hoard work. I was 35, and heavily pregnant with our now-6-year-old son, Galen.
At the time, I was teaching at 3 institutions as well as privately. I was a contracted player in the Pacific Symphony and the LA Chamber Orchestra, and subbed with the LA Philharmonic whenever I could. Then, as now, I was managing my schedule alongside recording sessions for film and TV. And Salastina was 7 years old.
While driving home from a Pacific Symphony rehearsal in Orange County late one rainy night, a car swerved into my lane. In my effort to avoid a crash, I spun the wheel -- and made a complete 360 turn in the middle of the 405 freeway. My car stalled as other cars whizzed past. It was a miracle there wasn’t an accident.
My first order of business at that moment was to get my ass in gear. But almost as present in my mind and body was the knowledge that it was time for some significant life changes. Namely: to rethink the sustainability of juggling 7 jobs. The potential consequences could not have made themselves clearer. Beneath my pounding heart, my seatbelt framed the baby who in less than 2 months would be Galen.
Of course, work-life balance isn’t generally an actual life-or-death issue. And I had seven jobs for lots of good reasons. Why wouldn't I, in my twenties and thirties, take every opportunity I possibly could to earn a living? Why wouldn't I squeeze in every chance to "be everywhere" and make a name for myself? Why wouldn't I follow my interests as far as I could take them? Why wouldn't I want to feel my skills were of use to as many other people as possible?
Not long after stalling on the 405, I looked down at the 3 ID cards hanging from my teaching lanyard. They suddenly looked like a totem for what a mad scramble my life had become. My many commitments, which had been a point of pride until then, started to take on a compulsive flavor.
There's a thin line between having ambition and having something to prove. Between enjoying a varied, multifaceted career and fearing scarcity. Between following your curiosity and filling a vacuum of personal and intellectual restlessness. Between feeling fulfilled by being of service to others and feeling drained by it.
I started to think more critically about why I’d always felt compelled to accumulate opportunities without making enough room for them.
As a breed, classical musicians are carrot-chasers. There would be no artistic excellence otherwise. But there's a dark side to this high level of intrinsic self-motivation. It can feel impossible to do enough; one can always “play better.” That never ends. While the biggest danger here is paralysis (read: “if I can never be good enough, why bother?”), burnout is a close second.
For better and for worse, we musicians are likewise habituated to the feeling of walking a tightrope. After all, anything can go wrong in the infinite sum of microseconds in which you are performing. This is great for cultivating grit, resilience, and courage. It’s not so great in that it can habituate us to constant pressure.
And as with everything else, status is born of affiliations: who you’ve studied with, where and how much you work, which competitions and auditions you’ve won, etc.
Being a freelance musician means saying yes to most of what comes your way for a good long while. It's a reality of making ends meet. This, too, becomes habitual – and is a very tough nut to crack. There’s a feeling of security, prudence, and control that comes from having one’s eggs distributed among many baskets. So how do you know when you can truly afford to let things go? Well… You can’t. It’s a risk life might compel you to take.
For me, that night on the 405 was one such moment. I’d like to say I’ve stayed on the straight-and-narrow since then, but life had other plans. The last time I wrote about anything related to “work-life balance” was a few months later, when our son Galen was about 3 months old. Suffice it to say that a lot has changed since then. For starters: our family welcomed a daughter, Naomi, in 2019.
While I now wear fewer hats than I did 6 years ago, the broad strokes of my daily life are the same. I am still a working mom. I still balance performing, recording, teaching, and administering a non-profit organization.
Though I'm still at Caltech, I no longer teach at Chapman or Colburn. I resigned from Pacific Symphony not long after that night on the 405 — a decision resulting in mercifully less driving. I'm still a member of LACO, though I'm on sabbatical this year for the first time. And I record in the studios when I can.
But Salastina, Kevin’s and my first baby, demands a lot more of me now. In 2020, we officially became a 501c3 nonprofit organization. Since then, I’ve formally served as Executive Director. And we’ve grown a ton. Being responsible to more constituents and for a bigger budget mean that the amount of support I receive from 4 part-time administrative staff is commensurate with a dramatic increase in pressure. So let’s call that one a wash.
On some level, even our kids know that my professional life looks different every day. They might ask if I’m headed to “the we-CO-ding studio,” “we-HOE-saw,” or “Up-STAY-ohs,” which means I’m going to our bedroom to practice or work on the computer. Most adorably, “Cow-tech” is code for teaching.
Most of the time, I live for the variety. It’s invigorating and inspiring. But managing these four jobs is in itself a job.
Despite the changes I’d made in 2017, my feelings of burnout reached an all-time low last summer. Think existential malaise meets the feeling that there was no way I could keep up the rhythm of my life. It was time for another come-to-Jesus moment around how I managed my life and livelihood.
It goes without saying that balancing work with family life is hard for everyone, the pandemic sucked across the board, and making a good living in the arts is not easy – especially in an expensive city like LA. I hadn’t thought of my situation as unique in any of those respects.
Necessity, zeal, and even autopilot simply meant I hadn’t taken the time to reflect on why I was feeling the way I was. And just like in 2017, it was my body – you know, that fleshy mass mysteriously integrated with the mind – that sounded the alarm.
Zooming out a little helped me see that the past two years had been quite the ride. In December of 2020, our daughter Naomi — who wasn’t yet two years old – endured a craniotomy for craniosynostosis. This was followed in June of 2021 by double eye surgery. The medical requirements and worry that accompanied these operations were naturally all-consuming. Though we are now thankfully on the other side of it all, the drawn-out intensity of the experience took a hefty toll.
When the pandemic hit, Kevin and I spent the shut-down making good on some shared goals for Salastina. For years, we'd felt like the asset we most needed was time. Kevin, Marissa, and I hustled our asses off to make the sudden infusion of this precious asset count. We produced over 100 virtual events, added a meaningful arm to our programming, and produced a season of outdoor concerts. Our collective hustle paid off for the organization. For me personally, it provided a desperately-needed distraction from Naomi’s medical ordeals.
In the Fall of 2021, all of the above ran alongside Caltech going back to teaching in-person, the studios getting busier (with the addition of constant COVID testing requirements), and LACO resuming live performances. Our 2021/2022 Season concluded in June with a project we’d been working on since before the pandemic: the premiere of OC fan tutte, our most expensive and elaborate production ever. While I’ll always be proud of it, the results did not meet our expectations; poor turnout was even mentioned in an otherwise favorable review.
When OC fan tutte wrapped, I was beyond ready for a break. Three days into our much-anticipated family vacation, all of us came down with COVID. While our travels were ultimately rich and memorable, COVID hung like a cloud. And just when we'd thought it was behind us, I began dealing with some wearying long-COVID symptoms. For months, unpleasant phantom smells were a constant, as was the sensation of ants wearing electrically-charged booties marching all over my entire body. The latter was especially tough to deal with when trying to fall asleep.
I was exhausted and irritable. Come August, things that normally brought me joy had lost their color. Even the growth Salastina had enjoyed during the pandemic left me feeling like we had nowhere to go but down. My limbs felt heavy. The academic year and concert season were already gearing up; I felt like I had nothing to give before they had even begun.
Life was bulldozing forward with or without me on board. And of course, I couldn’t control when or how my long-COVID symptoms would clear. While the state of my mind and body made for a far less dramatic wakeup call than that night on the 405, they were a wakeup call nonetheless.
In 2017, I’d stopped the bleeding by letting certain jobs go. But the same tactic wouldn’t do this time. My current three primary jobs are non-negotiable. I’m at Caltech for stability, our family’s health insurance, and the joy of stewarding the craft I love for a unique group of people. I’m in the studios for the money; the relevance to popular culture and socializing it provides are a nice bonus. And Salastina is what I’ve aspired towards since I was 19 years old. (We’re just getting started here!)
This time, the levers that needed pulling were more subtle, cumulative, and mundane. They required me to prioritize my physical and mental health.
Ahead of the Women in Classical Music Symposium in Dallas, the event organizers set up a Zoom meeting for the panelists to share what they hoped to contribute to the discussion. Given where I was at the time, I felt sheepish about dispensing “advice” or “words of wisdom" related to a subject I was struggling with so much.
Instead, I came prepared to share practical “tools of our time” that help me manage my day-to-day. (What kind of bougie Millennial would I be without them?) Maybe they’d help someone else. These included Superhuman, Bullet Journaling, Noom, Fitbit, Headspace, and this book. I could go on and on extolling the virtues of each and every one of them.
But Maximized Efficiency is a false god. The changes I needed — still need! — to focus on are common-sense pillars of health: proper sleep, good nutrition, responsive stress management, and physical movement. While cultivating and maintaining habits in these areas isn’t nearly as dramatic or publicly visible as, say, quitting a job, they can be just as — if not more — consequential to one’s sanity. But here’s a key difference: they require constant maintenance.
Sometimes, I don’t have the luxury of focusing on them in the ways I’d like. Nor do I always have it in me for constant vigilance in yet another area of life. That’s where a little nudge or positive reinforcement can go a long way – be it from your future self (“you’ll thank me later if you take ten deep breaths right now!”) or a partner, friend, or family member. For me in Dallas at the Symposium, it came courtesy of a handful of ladies I’d just met.
The Symposium truly couldn’t have come at a better time. It meant a lot to me to engage in public conversation with such accomplished, kind, generous, and wise colleagues. The open spirit of it all left me with a desire to be more candid and open about this subject than I ever have – both with others and with myself.
After our panel, a thoughtful, earnest, beautiful young woman in her mid-twenties started a conversation with me. She’d just moved to a new city, started a new job, and broken up with her boyfriend. She was pondering her short- and long-term career goals. Though she clearly had everything she needed to have a meaningful life, it was obvious she needed reassurance and sympathy from someone a bit, err, farther up its stream. I was heartened to be that person for her at that moment.
My own mid-twenties was the first time my body begged for my mind’s attention. I was a new member of an orchestra; my senior stand-partner was bullying me, casting doubt on whether or not I deserved to be there. To be fired from that context would have caused a damning ripple effect through the rest of my early career. I was terrified. And the situation exposed serious cracks in my own long-term relationship at the time.
I stopped eating — and was genuinely baffled as to why. Looking back, I have to wonder how much longer I would have just powered through without my body saying, effectively: “I quit.”
At that particular life crossroads, the required change was to end the relationship. Doing so ultimately put me in a better state of mind to “play the long game” at work. I felt more empowered, and leaned more heavily on friends for support. It also, of course, opened my antennae to the possibility of connecting with a partner who would be a better fit for me as we navigated jointly through life: my now-husband, Philip.
It's tempting to distill one’s path down to a series of deliberate personal choices. But economic realities, the details of your personal life, and luck lay just as many of the bricks. When people say things like “how do you do it all?”, I often feel like some idealized fiction of me is being addressed. The truth is that I don’t. I have a lot of help. There can be no honest talk of "Work/Life Integration" without taking this into account.
My husband Philip is a film composer; we are, on average, equal earners. Our family health insurance comes courtesy of my job at Caltech. Though our average annual incomes are nearly equal, mine is the more reliable and consistent; while a good year can find him nearly doubling my earnings, we have no way of knowing if or when that will happen. Philip also works from home. Most importantly, he is a Grade A Mensch. I have never felt our parenting duties are anything but equal.
We are privileged to be in a position to afford a part-time nanny three days a week. Now that our children are both in school, Elvia helps us with cleaning, cooking, and laundry when she’s here. When they inevitably get sick, there’s a 3 out of 5 chance Elvia will be there to look after them for a few hours. I cannot overstate how helpful this is in managing our household. And lastly, my parents live ten houses away from us. While this is not something we abuse, it is wonderful to have around.
I must again own my privilege here, and express how lucky I feel to enjoy these kinds of support. All that is to say: I do not feel, by any stretch, that all things child-rearing or bread-winning fall exclusively on my shoulders.
The Dallas panelists also brought up a wonderful question: where are men in all this? Rarely do we stop to ask men how they “balance” work with life. We all agreed that this was unfair. Men and working dads like Philip and Kevin deserve just as much support and recognition.
When the subject of “balancing work and life” comes up, the zeitgeist of the past several decades has favored compartmentalizing them. The Dallas panelists all agreed that this is a false line to draw, and that framing the two as wholly integrated is a more accurate reflection of how we live today.
Another privilege I enjoy: being able to integrate my family with my work. Many other professions don’t enjoy this luxury to the degree that I do. It’s my deep hope and wish that including them, however possible, in my working life shape them in positive ways, informing their own understanding of purpose, profession, and family.
Before our children were born, older colleagues would tell me how their own small children would react upon seeing them headed towards the door with their instrument cases. Who knew musicians worked nights and weekends?! This unfortunate fact doesn’t quite compute when you’re young, and the consequences to your future family life are so remote. Though tearful outbursts are now a thing of the past, it can still be hard to leave. (Stage whisper: it can also be amazing.)
At kindergarten pickup the other day, Galen asked how my day was. I cheerfully shared that Mama was happy because a foundation had awarded Salastina a $10,000 grant. He told me that was good, because now I could “buy a car.” Explaining why that’s not how that works — to say nothing of how much a car really costs — was an amusing challenge. And as one might expect, Naomi is BIG on Frozen these days. While she knows I played on the soundtrack, that fact now means more to me than it does to her — at no time more so than when she’s belting it while puttering about in her room.
I’m delighted my children have grown up immersed in music — again, a privilege of my profession. They know all our musician friends, and love it when we hold rehearsals at home. A particular favorite is “Auntie Reena.” She is beloved not for her stunning contributions to contemporary classical music composition, but rather for how she voices Mo Willems’ Pigeon. Another favorite: “Mr. Mario,” the luthier Mario Miralles. We’ve brought the kids to his “cabin in the woods” a few times, where they watched him gouge the back of my newly-finished violin. Because they bore witness to such an exotic process, they’ve been curious about it ever since.
Best of all, our children are finally old enough to attend the occasional concert. During our recent Happy Hour with composer Derrick Skye (or Uncle Derrick, as our kids know him), I asked the audience if they had any questions. Galen raised his hand; when I asked him what he wanted to say, I couldn’t hear the answer, smiled, and moved on. At the reception, an audience member sitting near him told me he had said: “I love you, Mama.”
Another idea that’s stayed with me since the Dallas Symposium came courtesy of Camille Delaney-McNeil, the youngest speaker on our panel. She advocated for “recognizing the season that you're in.” What she meant by this was that the demands of family life, your health, and your career ebb, flow, and change.
Right now, the season that Philip and I are in means that we are contending with just about one new viral infection circulating through our house every week. (A colleague recently snarked that I’ve had a cough for 6 years.) Running a mid-career work life on that kind of empty can be rough. But it’s par for the course with small kids in school. What can one say, except: it won’t last forever. (Which is unfortunate, because they are freaking adorable.) Camille’s framing here is a gentler way of reminding us to check our expectations, both of ourselves and of our lives.
I suspect there’s such a thing as “micro-seasons” in one’s life, too. Lately, I’ve been making an effort to be more conscious of how my focus changes within a day, day by day, week by week, and month by month in order to keep the various areas of my life ticking along. Much of this comes down to rejecting my impulse to multitask. I’m proud to share that I no longer down Trader Joe’s Kale Chicken Caesar salads balanced on my knee while driving… and (cough) maaaaybe composing emails (cough). Small changes like these add up.
This season of our life also feels like one of reflection, and dialing down the heat. Naomi’s operations are behind us; we’re well into our post-COVID “new normal.” For now, there are fewer fires to put out. As for how that translates into my working life: Salastina can’t — nor should it — grow at the same rate as it did during the pandemic. Now, it’s time to focus on local, sustainable growth (hold the non-GMO kale).
I’ve also been chewing on the fact that my well-being isn’t just about me. And of course, all parents’ fuses run short when frazzled. This is not news, and it’s incumbent on us to keep our potential for irritability in check. When I was at my worst this past August, it pained me to see how deeply it affected Philip. While he hardly blames me for the impact my stress had on him, I am more mindful than ever that taking care of myself is an outwardly-bound act of love for him. He has always intuited our interdependence more naturally than I have, and I admire him for it as much as I’ve benefited from it.
I’m not sure what my next come-to-Jesus will look like. In the meantime, I’m optimistic that holding myself accountable to healthier, non-negotiable habits will make me more prepared for it when it comes. At the very least, it’s important to me to model healthy habits for my children.
Last weekend, a former Sounds Promising Young Artist called with a career dilemma. He wanted advice about which of two opportunities to pursue in a situation in which going after both was not possible. Our conversation became less about the specific choice at hand and more broadly about fear of the unknown. What choices will result in more money, stability, personal fulfillment, future opportunities, or regret? Every choice involves risk; errors of judgement will be had. For my part, I’ve come to see regret as an instructive emotion pointing in the direction of one’s values — once one’s ego has had a sec to get over itself.
My parting words to him: “you’ll know when your leg is on fire.” When the temperature rises in any area, it does us all good to pay attention — fully, compassionately, and neutrally, as we might to a best friend. In the end, we very well may determine the heat is just fear talking.
“I’m worried my leg might be on fire” is something different altogether. This is a subtle and important distinction requiring no small amount of insight and self-trust; two things that take time and experience, and that no one else can supply for you.
Getting there is a season to be lived through.