"A majority of my time in school I didn’t feel like an adult. I approached life in many ways like a child does. I still do. My fear just brewed inside of me to the point where I needed to get out, and getting out was coming here to Bosnia. But what I do now when I feel tense, when I feel closed off from other people and my surroundings, when I feel anxious or doubtful, is remind myself that those symptoms are indicators that I am not in truth. Nothing that is in truth can breed pain. Error is pain, and truth is happiness, I really do think that. There are so many different stages that we go through in our lives and, in a way, you can connect it to the life and death principle. When we go from one stage in our lives to the next, something dies. Something has to die in order for us to grow and move and change, and with that comes an inevitable sadness. That’s the downward movement. But I approach this downward movement from the perspective that it’s a self-initiated test to see what I’m ready for."

"There is a misconception that we go into arts administration because we couldn’t hack it as performers. It hurts me to even say out loud because it’s so not true. The same thing can apply to being a teacher, being an educator, that you couldn’t handle it on the stage so you became a teacher, that’s another horrible misconception. I want to do everything all the time at the highest level possible, always. It’s a blessed curse, but in my mind there is no other option. I would hope that within arts admin, and as the field grows credentials-wise, that the gap would shorten between the ‘us vs. them’ feeling, the arts management vs. musician. I would hope that as things evolve those other things, like labor disputes or strikes or lockouts, those just begin to further dissipate because the greater goal is the same. We’re all pointing to the same idea, so I don’t know, we should work together."

“A friend of mine from undergrad once told me that after he’s completed a recital, a concert or something like that, he looks back on the preparation time and asks himself if he wasted any of it. He asks himself, “was there a moment where I could have been in the practice room and wasn’t?” For me, I too want to look at the end result and see that I did not waste any time in my preparation, and I use that as my guideline for practicing. But more recently, I’ve been looking back and asking myself if I have wasted time living my life. I ask myself, “did I spend as much time as I wanted going hiking, or cooking, visiting my family, or was I just in the practice room?” More or less, I’ve been trying to look back and see where my wasted time has gone. If I’m not practicing, then going hiking, or reading, or cooking makes me feel like I'm balancing myself out and it makes me feel like I’m doing something productive with the things that I really enjoy. And of course, at the moment I am sort of stuck between what’s real life and what’s not because I’m in school, but that doesn’t mean that I can’t at least try and live my life and make the most of it.”

"I have re-defined success. Success used to be so huge to me. I didn’t see it being successful in small bits, on a small scale, I just saw it as this huge thing looming over me, and I’ve realized it is about perspective. I didn’t see the success of playing an excerpt in the practice room and doing it really well. I didn’t see the success in not killing my cats one more day. What about the 3,000 dates I’ve been on and suffered through and still remained a person who believes in love, like that is success. Not eating 5,000 calories in a day, that is success. So, I try to chill out on the pressure that I put on myself, probably a little unsuccessfully so far, but I’ve been focusing on the smaller successes in life instead of just waiting for the huge one to happen and putting everything into that. That’s what got me into trouble in the first place. There’s even success in taking that deep breath when you’ve had a very horrible day. It’s a very small thing, but it can change everything."

"There are so many stigmas against letting yourself be vulnerable in seeking advice and help. There definitely is some of that hesitation within the freelancing world where people aren’t always sure they can openly talk about their frustrations, or openly talk about much of anything that is personal because they’re afraid they will be judged. It’s understandable too, because you never want to say anything that might jeopardize your chances of ever working again, but that’s why I feel like everyone should go to therapy at least once in their life, whether or not they want to admit it. It’s really not that bad. The therapist that I see now I’ve seen for almost two years, but my first six months or so I’d be really hesitant to say something to him because I wasn’t sure how he would judge me. But I realized no matter what, he’s going to be my friend in this, so why do I care? Sure, I’m paying him to listen to me, but he’s genuinely invested in me, and I know that because he can reference dreams I’ve had two years ago that I told him once. People just need to understand that no matter what, allowing yourself to talk with someone else about something will help you figure out either how to approach a situation or how to solve a situation. Solutions to problems come when you least expect it, and more often than not, hearing yourself saying something out loud steers us closer to finding those solutions."