Whew, we made it to April. March was an incredibly busy month for me. I was out of town March 14-17 for a conference called Alt Summit, and then again March 22-30 for another conference called AWP. Even before leaving for both those trips I was asking myself the question: was that the best decision? To commit to going to two conferences back-to-back?
Last year when AWP was in Kansas City, I was one year post-relapse and new treatments but still had a lot of lingering symptoms. So instead of attending the entire conference for 3 days, I stayed just 2 nights and my priority for being there was the off-site reading event that I have been hosting for 9 years now with three other nonfiction publications.
In this episode:
- how it was such a relief to still attend the conference in a way that works for me
- why I was in no condition to travel and had to skip the AWP conference in 2023
- when we don't have the capacity, bandwidth, energy to deal with, yes travel and logistics, but also our creative lives
- how I'm able to get my monthly medication infusions at home
- even getting my treatments at home, why the infusions in February and March went badly
- what I learned from two bad infusions in a row & why this was such an eye-opening experience
- how this lesson came up for me again when attending the Alt Summit conference
- the anxiety that came up for me around needed additional support to do the things that I used to be able to do on my own
- learning to be okay with the reality of being dependent
- how leaning into asking for help and accepting support directly impacts creative work
- how to cultivate self-awareness, advocate for the support you need, and have the conversations you need to have with people in your life
- if you have been learning lessons the hard way, what do you need to do to make change?
Links mentioned in this episode:
- Alt Summit: https://altitudesummit.com/
- AWP conference: https://awpwriter.org/
- follow me on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jannamarlies
- follow Under the Gum Tree on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/undergumtree/
