Jared here: I like to keep active, and that usually takes the form of my regular workouts. I use an app on my phone, kinda like a Netflix for workout programs. I like to do about four times a week. On tour, however, it mostly consists of sneaking in a few exercises whenever I have the time and the room for it. Today, down by the river, it was about 80 degrees out, but I had some time and the great outdoors at my disposal, so not ideal, but not too shabby, either.
Almost as soon as I got a good sweat going, the mosquitos began to zero in on me, buzzing in my ears, kamikaze-ing my eyes, and landing on every bit of exposed flesh. At first, I was casually waving them off, but that didn’t do anything. The waving gave way to swatting, which gave way to more swatting, then smacking myself wherever I felt one land. Before too long, I realized I was barely working out, spending more energy in pointless combat with the swarm, and ultimately just smacking myself. The mosquitos, however, were just doing what mosquitos do. I chose to come into in their space to do something, and I couldn’t really change what they’re doing to me no matter how hard I fought. In fact, I was only wasting my energy and hurting myself, while not accomplishing what I came there to do in the first place.
I took a deep breath and focused on the workout. I began to appreciate the warm sun and the cool shade, a slight breeze, the feeling of the grass on my feet, the sounds of the trees. I listened to the trainer’s encouraging voice, telling me to “stay with it, keep breathing, don’t stop, and go all the way to the end.” Thirty minutes later, I finished a killer workout, and had long since stopped even noticing the mosquitos.
In our line of work (as I’m sure with yours), we encounter the swarm daily. For us, it’s rejections, cold shoulders, dead silence, poor attendance, mounting expenses and low returns, self doubt, unfair and undue comparisons, criticisms, catastrophes, people telling what we should or shouldn’t be doing, people getting weirdly offended by our message and our music, the dark lies we tell ourselves, the dark lies that others tell us, the list goes on. We can choose to try to fight those things. We can take wild swings and lash out, but the swarm doesn’t care. It’s always going to be there, doing what it does while we flail about, slapping ourselves and raging at the nature of the thing. But in the end, it’s all just mosquitos. We came to the stage to do what we love to do. It can be hard sometimes, but when we just start tuning out the mosquitos, the world gets way more beautiful. “Stay with it, keep breathing, don’t stop, and go all the way to the end.” God. Damn. Right.
