Monthly Archives: May 2009

Where in the world is Jade?

By the time you read this I will be at Sivananda Yoga Vedanta Ashram in Neyyar Dam, India.  More than a few people have already enquired as to why I would want to spend a month (or more) practicing meditation and yoga in monsoon season with no hot water for showers.  Through a series of blogs I am going to attempt to answer this question!

It all started with a new year in 2008, reflecting on my first decade in the work force.  Like most people, I had stable and secure employment as a singing teacher in several schools in Melbourne and also managed the Karen Leonard Music School.  While I enjoyed my teaching and the relationships I had developed with my students and the lifestyle my job afforded me, I was not entirely happy.

By chance, Fiona purchased a copy of Timothy Ferris’ “4 Hour Work Week”, which I read from cover to cover in record time.  This book is now my bible and I take it everywhere I go.  In short, Tim explains – in more tangible detail than any other ‘wealth creation’ book I have read – how to leverage yourself out of the nine to five rat race and into a career and lifestyle of your own design.  This book, seriously, changed my life.

So at the end of 2008, I resigned from all of my teaching positions to, once and for all, pursue my dream of a performance career, which had long been side-lined.  I have spent the past five months laying the foundations of a new online career.

I have started writing songs again – recording more than a dozen new tracks for release this year.  I have launched my online store, this blog and Myspace and Twitter pages.  This online medium of distribution also sits well with my ethical stance on reducing our environmental impact as I will no longer be manufacturing hard copy CDs and DVDs.  No land fill!  Yay!

So I am now a fledgling blogger and have discovered I am not the only one pursuing a self-created lifestyle.  In fact, there are so many people doing this now it even has a term:  Location Independent Business.  Who knew?!

My aim now is to have a level of creativity in all areas of my life, not just my compositional and performance work.

So, back to the ashram.  When my lifestyle coach, Loreen Visser, asked me what I would want to do if I weren’t teaching singing, my answer surprised me.  I said I had a strong desire study yoga and meditation intensively.  Second to that, I wanted to create a situation where I could write, record and release music as my total source of income.

With the first release of my new recordings coinciding with the first day of my stay at Sivananda today, I can now see a wonderful synergy at work in my life.

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