It is easy to make your whole life about music whether working, relaxing or socialising and this can become overwhelming without you knowing it.
Relationships in the industry can be very blurred with band members and managers who are also friends. Ensuring that you have friends and family who have nothing to do with this world can help keep you grounded.
A life outside music is an important part of work life balance and building in routine day to day activities – cooking a meal with family and friends, socialising in a non-music related environment can relieve stress, provide important grounding and help you in your creative work.
It’s also important to build and maintain relationships with people outside of music. Ways of doing this could include taking on new hobbies or finding sports activities where you can meet different people.
Staying in touch with family and friends from home on tour can be a great way to avoid loneliness on the road and help maintain perspective on life beyond music (and the tour bubble). It will also help with reintegration back into your life after the tour is over.
George Musgrave has published on this subject and reviewed the different ways in which support of family impacts wellbeing.
He found family support was key to career development either emotionally in the form of encouragement, or through the material and financial support provided by parents or partners.
Dependence or reliance on family support was also seen by some as a failure which could create a feeling of heavy debt of gratitude, impacting self-esteem and relationships.
Music work was often framed as competing with, even in some cases harming, other relationships, and that this conflict could come to harm the wellbeing of musicians. The negative impact on musicians’ mental health from long periods spent away from family whilst travelling for their work is well documented.
Musicians can become socially isolated with all outside relationships subsumed to the music work and Patrick McGuire argues that romantic partnerships, close friendships, collaborative creative relationships, and bonds with family members–are an essential part of sustaining a career, for happiness, mental health, and well-being as well as for creativity.
