Post the first

Hello, world! 

Just so you know… this time will be different.  I promise.  You see, this is approximately my 1000th attempt at blogging.  I tried to blog several times in the past, mostly while I was working nasty temp jobs and feeling very bitter about it all.  It never worked.  I just wrote horror stories of the "customer service representative" variety and spiraled ever deeper into self-pity.  But nevermore!  Why, you ask?  Because I have given my career a total makeover (not an easy feat in this economy, and oh don’t worry, I’m really poor, but more on that later) and now I like what I do.  And I have aspirations, and goals, and I get excited to go to work in the morning – which is weird for me, but a welcome change.

My background… long story long.  (Feel free to skim or skip around as this part is more therapeutic for me than interesting for you.)  I was an idealistic music major, and realized suddenly and unfortunately that that is a great way to ruin a perfectly good hobby.  Graduated with a Bachelor’s and decided I was DONE WITH MUSIC FOREVER.  (It was in all caps in my brain.)  Hence the temp jobs and the 3-year period of aimless floating around, making decent money, but feeling completely directionless.  I have learned that I cannot be done with music, not even for five minutes, so it was pointless for me to try to turn my back on it.  For a long time after graduation, though, my metric for success was a complete mess.  I studied voice in college, in a very intensive program where a career as an opera singer was the assumed goal for most of the students.  I loved (and love) to sing, but had told myself that the only way I could be successful would be to sing for money and do what all my friends were doing – working terrible jobs and then spending all disposable income on audition fees, headshots, voice lessons, and coachings.  Assuming the role of Starving Artist and wearing it like a badge, with great pride and a wry smile.  Problem was, I didn’t go on auditions.  Ever.  I kept telling myself I’d go to the next one – that I wasn’t ready yet – that I needed to learn a new aria.  But the aria was a long time coming, or, if I’d learned it, I was convinced it would never be good enough to even try out on an audition panel.  The extreme level of judginess I experienced in undergrad had done too good a job, and auditions became horrible looming things that it was easier to just ignore.

Fast forward to December 2010.  I was taking voice lessons with a teacher who was long on tough and short on love.  Hating myself for never singing outside my lessons – even practicing became a chore that I began to dread.  And working in MORTGAGE.  Yes.  A young, idealistic, artsy kid had found herself suddenly 25 with a horrifyingly awful job at a major American bank.  I drowned daily in a sea of beige cubicles.  It was my job to call people and tell them that the bank’s paltry attempt at “foreclosure prevention” had failed, and that the bank would be taking their house, and no they couldn’t speak to my supervisor, and no there wasn’t anything I could do.  I would sit on my bed and cry when I woke up every morning, because I hated my job so much.  It was a period during which I drank a LOT of wine.  And then, on December 1, my boss gave me the greatest Christmas present ever – she fired me.

It has taken me a long time to get to where I currently am.  Which is, being able to say that I am a musician, and that I love music, but that it is no longer my goal to make my living as an opera singer.  I have a serious and profound admiration for people whose aim that is.  It is a hard life, filled with uncertainty, rejection, and for most, relative poverty.  Obviously the upside is that you get to be an opera singer.  But there was a teacher at my college who gave some of the best advice I have ever received: being a singer is HARD.  It is so hard that most people will discover that it’s not worth it.  So if there is anything, ANYTHING else you can do for a living and be happy, do that instead.  It will save you years of heartache and probably lots of money.  After months - years, really - of searching, I have found something I can do and be excited about – and it’s liberating not to have to hate myself all the time for failing at “being a singer.”  Now I can just be a singer – in the car, in the shower, at karaoke, a person with an educated ear, a person who works in the arts and makes a difference in her community.  I now work for 3 different arts organizations in the Twin Cities, and I feel so different, and so much better, than before.  Best of all, the more I learn, the more excited I become about all the different opportunities in the arts community.  There’s so much more to come!