Rough start, this one, but it's going swimmingly

This year was a "jump in the water and start paddling" year.  It's been an interesting one - I have more new students this year than I've ever had than the year I jumped into teaching full time (again) back in the day.  In fact, more, because I have "a reputation" now (dun dun dun!)  The first two weeks were heavy-duty, this week wasn't much better, and did I mention a concert fund-raiser in the middle of that, for which I was the fall guy?

Ok, I admit, the concert fund-raiser wasn't all that bad, but I really didn't have as much time as I would have liked to donate to the final details, and people weren't being all that good about getting me every little thing in a truly timely fashion (I know, I know, there were extenuating circumstances, for almost all of you) and there were a few dramatic moments that came about due to life circumstances, etc.  I'm not complaining, mind you, but it wasn't the sort of polished, finished job I like to produce, and I'm not proud of that.  Unfortunately, I'm even less proud of the fact that I was willing to step aside and let it be that way. I am, in fact, ashamed of my lack of worry about the lack of perfection.  On the other hand, it made for a far more pleasant event, at least from my point of view.

I received a number of very positive and flattering comments, and of course, the obligatory whining and slamming, but all in all, it was a good evening.

There will be more on the performer's ego coming soon - something I both think I understand on one level, and don't on another.  Additionally, I have some thoughts new philosophies I'm trying on for size.  So far, they seem to be making a much more even pathway, and I'll share them soon.

In the meanwhile, I have this weekend to just kick back and sort of sigh a sigh of relief that the term is officially under way, and that I only have two new students to meet (probably this week).  Whew!

The beginning, or the end?

My life is a little in flux these days. I love my work, the music that permeates it daily. I love the art, and not to be too egotistical, I am very good at what I do.  It is, however, an oddly stressful job.  It's not brain surgery.  What I do won't change the world, or even one person's life to the extent that even someone who works at setting bones in an emergency room's work does.  I am not making the world a better place, am not curing cancer, or helping the handicapped get better.

This is pointed out to me on a regular basis.  Old high school classmates sarcastically comment from time to time when I bring up research on vocal issues in a public forum.  Of course, these are people who have never been nice to me, so this is no surprise.  Yet even the administrations in my outside-the-house jobs will make comments from time to time:  again, no surprise.  One is about results-oriented training (e.g., how many kids pass into the great choir in the sky), the other about money for their "more important" endeavors. (Quotes mine - they would never dare to say it outright, but fact is, if it helps to pay for their orchestra, they're all for it; if it actually benefits the voice students, but costs money, less so.)

Still, I would like to think that I matter. The fact that I don't - neither my needs, nor what I do - is a little discouraging from time to time.

Contrast that with a recent job interview I had for a university.  The professors there were so pretentiously serious it was a little off-putting.  Maybe I've spent too much time being reminded that what I do doesn't really matter, but the utter seriousness with which they addressed their tastes in music, and put those tastes forward as if they were the word of God made me a little happy I didn't get the job. Not to mention the lifestyle issues.

That said, I would still prefer to teach in a university/college than where I am now.  Why?  Well, pretentiousness aside, being valued for something seems to be an important part of the human experience.  Sure, I'd rather be valued for being a good person, for making someone's day better, for being a loving, caring, world-changing being.  I'll settle for being valued for being a good voice teacher.

This year will be, I hope, the transition year.  I end one stage of my career, either way - either to go forward, and accept what I thought was my destiny before it got derailed - or to stop the quest.  This is not because of some need to feel valued, by the way.  This is about cold, hard common-sense.  The arts in the US are in disarray, and it's becoming increasingly difficult to feel that I'll be ok working 4 hours in one place, and fifteen (or 10, if place one has its way) in another, and hoping to work 10 in another.  I digress - this is, as I've heard someone say, "another show."

Also "another show" will be why it seems so important, for me in particular, to be needed and acknowledged.  But that, I fear, might be too much for me right now.

Suffice it to say that in this year of endings, there will be a new beginning, one in which I hope to be reborn.  I won't say "reinvented" because a) I hate that word, and b) I'm not inventing anything.  I'm just waiting for the light to shine.