TERESA: I guess the most immediate example is obviously the injury in my hand. And that was, like, a huge turning point because, before that, even like the small practice pains or anything beyond that in my life beyond music was just something that I just ignored because I just considered it unimportant to me. And that was the huge flip, in terms of at least music, where it was something that I could not afford to not pay attention to this thing. Like, this was very dangerous pain. If I had pushed myself beyond that, or tried to, I could have damaged things so that I could never play music ever again.
So I think, in general, with classwork and things, as well, now, I’m a lot better about listening to myself. If I’m sitting down to do an assignment and things just aren’t working, nothing’s clicking, and I’m reading the same sentence over and over again and it’s just not making sense, I just– I close my laptop. I go do something else. I take a nap. And then I return to it later.
