Today, 17th May 2020, was meant to be a milestone

Today was meant to be the final show on the UK leg of ‘The King and I’ tour before we headed off to Taiwan for a month and then other adventures further afield. It was meant to be a day of celebrating over 300 shows, celebrating family and each other. Instead, we find ourselves spread out all over the world - having spent the last 2 months adjusting to a strange new world where ‘live’ theatre as we know it does not exist.

Days like this - it can be hard to be sensible about everything when I think about what was lost, what could have been and perhaps the even more daunting questions of when we will be able to ‘return’ to the theatre, whether it will feel remotely the same and if expecting it to feel the same does me more harm than good.

Much of my worry has stemmed from the perceived ‘interruption’ to a blossoming career in the performing arts. I could see the steps I had taken, the progress I had made and the opportunities that were beginning to open up on the horizon. I now worry that I won’t be able to step back into the race, I worry that I’ll be left behind, I worry that this is all there is to it. Like every responsible citizen of the world, I looked at every achievement merely as a set-up for the next, and I created a series of dots just so I could connect them all in a line and measure my success against the standards of the world.

I had my eyes firmly set on the future, the present - a means to the future. But I also have to live fully in the present. If I don’t take care of what I need today, I won’t be ready for the future I am trying to build. So in the past few weeks, I have made a conscious and deliberate choice to slow down. Every week since the middle of April, I have taken gentle and measured steps to stop running the race, to step off the wheel, to breathe and to listen. It has not been easy - coming off 8 show weeks, constant travel and the collective stress of COVID19. But now, I find myself now at a juncture where I can begin to devote an entire week to meditation, or at least begin the process.

I have now started to view this ‘interruption’ as a stepping stone. Stepping stones - by nature - are transitory. I don’t know how long I’ll be on this stepping stone, but I do know that I won’t be here forever. However long I stay here depends on how soon we can learn to live with COVID19, and perhaps more importantly, whether I learn the things I am meant to learn while I am here on this stepping stone.

I am reminded of something a dear colleague from the tour recently told me: “I’m content that before this happened I was doing good work, and that that will continue when this is all over.”

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My name is Eu Jin. I am a professional actor, writer, educator and coach. This blog charts my inner journey and my personal Healthy Inner Life Practice. I am committed to supporting and nurturing performing arts education - specifically in the area of career sustainabilty through practical approaches to inner health. If you would like to engage in a conversation about a healthy inner life practice, please leave me a message on the "Contact" page of my website. Thank you.

#AfterCOVID

The COVID19 pandemic will be a defining moment in many of our lives, and at this point, it can be difficult to see any sort of light at the end of the tunnel. Because of that, we find ourselves holding our breaths, hoping that the next corner we turn will give us a glimpse of this light, some kind of release. Days pass, weeks pass and now months begin to pass, turning corners everyday without the hint of a light. In fact, the tunnel we’re in is starting to feel longer, darker and narrower.

But the end of the tunnel is there. Just because we can’t see it doesn’t mean it’s not there.

For some, the loss of loved ones, livelihoods and dreams they have spent their whole lives nurturing and building, their homes, their health are things they might never recover from. I can only speak from my own experience and perspective.

Like my previous post, the question of whether COVID19 has and will continue to change us is an important one. The next question then becomes what I choose to do about it.

I am incredibly fortunate to have a family that I can be with during this time. I am lucky that we have the resources to keep ourselves as healthy as possible, and I am blessed to be in a financial situation that allows me to ride out this storm.

So increasingly, I find myself asking this question: what do I want my life to look like after COVID19? It helps me to visualize a perspective after we have found a way to co-exist with this virus. What are the lessons I want to learn to take forward to the future? How can I reframe an incredibly challenging situation? Now to be clear, I don’t HAVE to do any of these things and there are days I don’t feel like being sensible. It is a choice I make every single day because amidst all the things I am not in control of, my choice in this matter is the one thing that I am in control of.

I am re-discovering space to re-connect with my inner life in ways that a full and busy life did not previously allow me to. I find that I am now able to devote entire weeks to writing, to meditation, to learning a new language … and I am finding what joy holding prolonged space for these things can bring. And I ask myself - can I keep holding this space in the future?

I think about the possibility of taking 6 months every few years to go to a local community, live there and contribute. I think about taking time to re-connect in a deep, meaningful way that I am able to now and I wonder - is this possible?

I have taken time out before, but it was always conditional. There was always an external force defining the start and end point. Now I get to decide what those start and end points are depending on a deeper connection to my state of being, and what a joy that has been.

I am being productive because I want to, not because I have to be. I am building foundations for life after COVID19. Whether any of it comes to pass, I don’t know. All I can do is make the choice everyday.

So what will your life look like #AfterCOVID19?

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My name is Eu Jin. I am a professional actor, writer, educator and coach. This blog charts my inner journey and my personal Healthy Inner Life Practice. I am committed to supporting and nurturing performing arts education - specifically in the area of career sustainabilty through practical approaches to inner health. If you would like to engage in a conversation about a healthy inner life practice, please leave me a message on the "Contact" page of my website. Thank you.

Has the COVID19 pandemic changed you?

The COVID19 pandemic has certainly changed my personal landscape for 2020. The last month and a half have been an unpredictable, very unsettling and sometimes overwhelming journey. I joined the world in scrambling for cover and holding our collective breath. I found myself shoved into grief for the loss of what was meant to be another big couple of steps forward in my life’s work. I wasn’t angry; I was mostly too worried to be angry … but I wanted to know. I craved certainty. I wanted to understand and so I thrust myself into the news cycle, watching and hoping for any glimmer of an explanation, a respite, a cure, any sign that the virus was subsiding. But it did not. It has not, and holding my breath has become harder and harder.

It didn’t help that I’d been battling a chest infection (which has now been diagnosed as Bronchitis) since late January. I carred this state of mind from the snap decision to leave Liverpool to the lockdown in London, across the miles to a government-mandated quarantine in Singapore and finally back home in Singapore, where it freaked me out to think that I might have brought COVID19 back and infected my parents.

I was still holding my breath without even knowing it.

But 3 weeks ago, I started writing. I threw myself into writing a show that I’d been slowly incubating for the last two years. This show had been particularly frustrating because nothing in the last two years has really stuck. But I found myself looking down a clear line. So I jumped on it. The momentum was the first piece of clarity I had had since the tour had been cancelled.

What this has inadvertently created for me was the space to look at what energy I needed to be able to continue writing. Watching the news cycle and scrolling endlessly through Facebook was not helpful - it was draining energy and sending me down a spiral. Watching how other people were seemingly so productive during this time made me feel worse. So I stopped all of it. I went into a place of preservation so that I could create, and within that space, I found that I could breathe.

So I’ve stayed here - in this place of preservation - for the last 3 weeks and have taken a good hard look at how I have changed. With clearer eyes. For me, the answer is - I haven’t changed not at all.

The work I was doing prior to COVID19 still remains my life’s work.

I’ve looked at how I want to engage the world. It is still on my terms.

My boat in the middle of the ocean that holds creative spark is still water tight.

My inner critic and my inner child are all still safe. Slightly bruised and overly dramatic but otherwise just fine.

COVID19 has and will change the world. The “new” normal will just become normal. I will surely find myself holding my breath again in the future as numbers continue to rise, as more people I know become infected or lose ther lives, as we experience second and third waves, and as vaccines are tested and finally approved.

But it hasn’t changed me. Not in the things that matter the most.

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My name is Eu Jin. I embarked on a career as a professional actor after 20 years in the corporate world. I am a big advocate of personal growth in the performing arts. I dedcate time and energy in performing arts education, specifically in the arena of practical approaches to inner health because I believe that this lays the groundwork for a sustainable career as an artiste.

If you would like to engage in a conversation about a healthy inner life practice, please leave me a message on the "Contact" page of my website and a way to contact you. Thank you.

Becoming "unmessable with"

Never has a single cultural phenomenon defined our society as social media has. It has become a mainstay in the way we learn and interact with the world. It is a place to make friends, make money, see and be seen. For the performing artist, it could be our gateway to the world. So much more so in 2020 - when social media has become - for many - the ONLY way to stay connected to the world.

And yet many performing artists I know struggle with how to wield social media. I know I have. Many have a love-hate relationship with it - wanting the exposure, the connections and the validation but not the criticism; wanting to be in-the-know one month and deleting their accounts the next only to come back the following month.

I made a couple of decisions early on in my performing arts career on how to wield social media in a sustainable and healthy way:

1) I do not live my life on social media - other than declaring my undying love for fried chicken

2) When I do use social media, it will be as an extension of the work I do in person

3) I retain full autonomy over who I am connected to on social media and what people post on my social media platforms

4) I create a presence on social media that is congruent with who I am in real life, but who I am on social media is not all I am

5) I do not rely on social media for personal or professional validation

In doing so, I become “unmessable with”.

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My name is Eu Jin. I embarked on a career as a professional actor after 20 years in the corporate world. I am a big advocate of personal growth in the performing arts. I dedcate time and energy in performing arts education, specifically in the arena of practical approaches to inner health because I believe that this lays the groundwork for a sustainable career as an artiste.

If you would like to engage in a conversation about a healthy inner life practice, please leave me a message on the "Contact" page of my website and a way to contact you. Thank you.