Irvine, being a planned community, is really good shorthand, especially in a movie or book, for understanding suburban pressures.
I have to take time occasionally to get away from the pressures of this business. If I don't, I think I would get stale, and that would show in my music.
Around 1998, I went through lots of pressures and struggles. My children got married within eight months of each other, my son was diagnosed with cancer and went through major surgery and radiation, my mother had five life-threatening hospitalizations where I stayed with her, my husband's dental office burned to the ground.
Our system presumes that there are certain principles that are more important than the temper of the times. And you must have a judge who is detached, who is independent, who is fair, who is committed only to those principles and not public pressures of other sort. That's the meaning of neutrality.
Without an understanding of history, we are politically, culturally and socially impoverished. If we sacrifice history to economic pressures or to budget cuts, we will lose a part of who we are.
When I was in college or working, I had the luxury of writing on whatever subject. Now, I'm in the business, I have a deadline and pressures. Sometimes, I have to do things that I am not in the mood for.
Do I feel any pressure as the most decorated Winter Olympian in American history? None at all. The only pressures that I know I face are those of how to pay it forward: How can I continually make a positive impact in people's lives, help others achieve their dreams, create their own Olympic mindset, creating champions within themselves?
When you reach that competing point, when you reach that time when the gun is about to go off, everyone's level is pretty much the same. The one thing that's going to separate you from everybody else is how you deal with those pressures, how you stay relaxed.
I don't think I had a reputation as a hard worker, but inside I was always being eaten up by the pressures.
I was putting all those pressures on myself.
