Notices by artsyhonker aka Kathryn (artsyhonker@mastodon.art), page 14

I'm not an American citizen and I don't have a lot of spare money right now.

What I can do is write hymn tunes.

If you have a short hymn text in solidarity with child refugees and others harmed by ICE, I can set it to music by, like, Thursday, and donate a portion of my Patreon proceeds to RAICES.

The idea would be to get it online before choir practice o'clock on Thursday night, so that churches could use it this Sunday.

@sixohsix
I think that's all I got.

I should type this up properly and put it online somewhere, I guess.

@sixohsix
When I lived with an abusive step-parent I was nervous and stressed all the time! There was nothing wrong with me at all, I just needed to live somewhere safer.

@sixohsix
And sometimes feeling anxious/stressed is for a really good reason. If your teacher is telling at you, or you're being pushed faster than you're comfortable with, that's worth noting.

It doesn't necessarily mean "give up" but it might mean spending some time calling your teacher rude names in your head, or figuring out how to ask to take things slower, or something. I don't drive so can't troubleshoot that stuff.

@sixohsix
What I end up doing with musical performance is having a bit of a routine, usually incorporated into my instrumental warm-up. This helps some people with other kinds of stress too. A lot of it sounds pretty basic: making sure I get enough sleep, water and food.

Sometimes none of these things work immediately. I still get anxious walking home sometimes. For ages I took my bike to the station whenever I took the Tube because cycling in the dark was fine!

@sixohsix
Other things that help people calm down:
-going for a walk
-listening to a particular song
-tracing labyrinths (I do these on paper)
-stretching

With all of these, practising when you feel "normal" or even good means they become more effective tools when you're stressed.

@sixohsix
If you only ever do this when you already feel wrecked, it won't work very well. Try 3 breaths in a row, a few times a day. If making it a habit is difficult, link it to something like going to the loo or eating. And then when you start to feel stressed, try 3 breaths.

You'll still feel stressed, and that's OK, but it might not spiral so badly.

@sixohsix
I don't like to teach these methods without also teaching some "how to calm down" stuff, especially with learned anxiety that's intensifying rather than getting easier.

So, how to calm down? This also takes practise.

Probably the most powerful lever you have on your nervous system is your breathing. The simplest exercise is breathing in to a count of X and out to a count of >X. The speed and number don't matter much as long as out is longer than in!

@sixohsix
All these techniques basically habituate you to what it's like to do the performance activity when you're physically and mentally tense/below par. Then you know what to expect, and it's less likely to turn into a complete disaster.

@sixohsix
Practising performing despite nervousness means that in your daily practice you do things to replicate the feeling of nervousness you'd get in the performance situation. It might include things like running up and down the stairs so you're out of breath and your heart is racing, then playing your piece of music and seeing what goes wrong. It might mean standing on one foot whilst practising your speech. It might mean asking someone to try to distract you.

@sixohsix
If you're a performing musician you may well know some things that work for you to alleviate this kind of stress. If you don't, ask every musician you knowhow they cope and you'll get a lot of answers!

I tend to divide such strategies into two categories:
-practising performing despite nervousness
-practising calming down

@sixohsix
2) It's possible to basically train yourself to be anxious in certain situations, and it sounds like that might be happening here. It happened to me after a mugging once: I forced myself to walk home in the dark before I was really ready to (it was winter and getting dark early) and trained my body/mind to get scared when walking down my own street in the dark. This was inconvenient!

Thankfully it's possible to train oneself out of such responses, too.

@sixohsix
Many thoughts!
1) If you're getting nervous/stressed about a thing, you are getting nervous/stressed about it, and telling yourself you "shouldn't" feel a certain way is unlikely to help. It's a sign that you care about the outcome of what is happening.

It might help to say "I was really worried about that, but it turned out OK, I'm glad there was a good outcome" without judging yourself for feeling stressed.

@sixohsix Hmm.

Would you like suggestions?

@Corvusheart Good good.

Tranexamic acid is available over the counter here, if that helps you, but you do have to ask the chemist for it, it's usually behind the counter somewhere.

@Corvusheart :-( do you have what you need?

@kafkaesqueNomad ewww.

:-(