When You Learn a Lesson the Hard Way

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/

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