What's really been going on...and why I haven't posted in awhile
This first part is for my dad's benefit.
Weather report:
Today in Fargo it is blizzarding wildly. Visibility is about one click at best, snow is piling up. I would measure it's depth by saying in most places it nearly covers the tops of my red Italian leather shoes. The temperature is: windy and cold. It is April 3 and feels like January 1st. It is bad and no one likes it. The entire town is in chaos. Events, school, and work are cancelled for most {i.e. not me}. It is the worst blizzardish weather I have seen since '97.
For everyone else--begin reading blog here***
You may wonder why I have no been all that verbose lately, given my history of lengthy and frequent blog posts. I have been blaming it on seasonal depression publicly, but that's not really why. I have not been posting because I have been processing a major thing.
2007 is the Year of Recovery (self-declared). To that end, I began a 12-week process of creative recovery on the 1st of January entitled "The Artist's Way." I have been saying for a long time that I needed counseling for singers, and while I never did find that, this book has done the trick for me. There's a lot I could say about realizations I have come to in the past three months, the things that I have had to face emotionally, spiritually, financially, and all of that. But truthfully, it hasn't been that bad. This has been a very joyful time for me. And because of that, I have been very protective of my process (something the artist's way recommends and that I agreed with). This recovery is my own. I am doing it in my own way. This is not to please anyone else, this is for me, and something that I need to do.
Furthermore, the things I need to recover from, and the decisions I make hence and because of this recovery, I should not have to justify to just anyone. These are my decisions, between myself, God, and my husband, and that is enough.
So, all of that to say, that I have been protective of this process.
A few major things came to light as a result of this process of recovery. The first was that I have put aside my music making for too long. The second was that I was not going to start music making again without fixing up my very deep and very bad wounds from bad people and bad experiences in college and since. The third was that I needed to know if I really wanted to do music--instead of doing it because I could, because someone wanted me to, because I didn't want to disappoint someone, or because I didn't know what else to do. The fourth was that I am finally at a point in my life where the things like money or my husband being in school are no longer hindrances to my deciding what to finally do about my singing.
So, I began to take some very huge risks. Granted, they may not seem like huge risks to you, but to me, having completely given up the hope of ever doing anything musical in my life again, having resigned myself to life behind a desk in the bland banking world, this was a big deal. I started taking voice lessons again. I actually found a voice teacher--someone who was willing to work with me--and started working again. And, surprisingly, I found that it was NOT traumatizing (for the first time ever) to work on my voice. This teacher was not sabotaging me. This teacher could help me through my technical issues--and I was finding success. In the past three months I have not cried once during a practice session (compare this to college when crying was an every day thing for me, and, I might add, totally out of character).
Simultaneously, I began to realize that I wanted to go back to grad school. So, I wrote a few emails to a few contacts at NDSU, and within two days, I had a voice teacher (see above), a grad school application, and an almost-sure acceptance into the graduate program at NDSU.
Yes:
I am going to grad school. For singing. This fall.
And, what is more, I have already applied, auditioned, and been accepted. The final stage of this process is yet to come--that is to see if I will be granted a teaching assitantship which will guarantee me a tuition waiver--which will fully secure my place in the ranks of students in the fall.
Three months ago I was not even remotely thinking about any of this stuff. But the Artists Way book--it gives you tasks that you have to complete every day. And one of those is writing "morning pages." These are a glorified journal where you get to write whatever you want as soon as you wake up in the morning. It can be your list of things to do, it can be how annoyed you are that everyone at work still tries to visit with you in the morning even though they know you aren't a morning person (the majority of my morning pages are of this version) the point being, it is a place where you don't have to judge yourself--but you can just let everything go.
Through this I really started to feel free to process. I didn't have anyone outwardly examining me, seeing if I was thinking "correctly," giving me the third degree to make sure I was making the right decision. I just got to think for myself, by myself.
And within three days I was writing volumes about how I wanted to go back to grad school, how I wanted to figure out what was wrong with me and why I couldn't move forward with my singing, why my experience in college was sooooooooooooo bad, and how legitimate the criticisms I've received in the past really were.
Conclusion:
Most of the feedback I received from two teachers in particular in college was complete bullshit from people who were either purposefully (in one case) and non-purposefully (maybe in the other) trying to sabotage me for their own reasons. Looking back, I can see now what was going on politically in the department, to an extent, that caused this. Partly, I can't see what caused it. I even had a teacher at the time who pointed it out to me, but I refused to acknowledge that I wasn't completely in control of the situation. Mostly though I am sure that my sharpest critic was just intimidated by the fact that I was a confident woman who wasn't afraid to get in his face, and he was unwilling to deal with that or something, so he tried to bring me down as much as possible. Well, he did his damage. But he can go to hell now, because I will not allow this to hold me back any longer. The truth is, by and large, I have really had nothing but good things said about my singing. Yes, there are issues with my voice--there are issues with everyone's voice. I had to let go of the few negative things said by this little man in my past so that I could move on.
It's funny, too, how once this ball got rolling--this creative recovery come quest for grad school, that everything really came together in just a matter of a few weeks.
So, that's it. It's pretty much a done deal. This is a decision I am making for me. And it is the right decision, the right time, the right situation, and the right frame of mind. I don't need to hear any naysaying or rationalizing or a third degree from anyone thinking I'm ruining my life or anything. I'm quite alright just the way I am.
Viva la Recovery!
Weather report:
Today in Fargo it is blizzarding wildly. Visibility is about one click at best, snow is piling up. I would measure it's depth by saying in most places it nearly covers the tops of my red Italian leather shoes. The temperature is: windy and cold. It is April 3 and feels like January 1st. It is bad and no one likes it. The entire town is in chaos. Events, school, and work are cancelled for most {i.e. not me}. It is the worst blizzardish weather I have seen since '97.
For everyone else--begin reading blog here***
You may wonder why I have no been all that verbose lately, given my history of lengthy and frequent blog posts. I have been blaming it on seasonal depression publicly, but that's not really why. I have not been posting because I have been processing a major thing.
2007 is the Year of Recovery (self-declared). To that end, I began a 12-week process of creative recovery on the 1st of January entitled "The Artist's Way." I have been saying for a long time that I needed counseling for singers, and while I never did find that, this book has done the trick for me. There's a lot I could say about realizations I have come to in the past three months, the things that I have had to face emotionally, spiritually, financially, and all of that. But truthfully, it hasn't been that bad. This has been a very joyful time for me. And because of that, I have been very protective of my process (something the artist's way recommends and that I agreed with). This recovery is my own. I am doing it in my own way. This is not to please anyone else, this is for me, and something that I need to do.
Furthermore, the things I need to recover from, and the decisions I make hence and because of this recovery, I should not have to justify to just anyone. These are my decisions, between myself, God, and my husband, and that is enough.
So, all of that to say, that I have been protective of this process.
A few major things came to light as a result of this process of recovery. The first was that I have put aside my music making for too long. The second was that I was not going to start music making again without fixing up my very deep and very bad wounds from bad people and bad experiences in college and since. The third was that I needed to know if I really wanted to do music--instead of doing it because I could, because someone wanted me to, because I didn't want to disappoint someone, or because I didn't know what else to do. The fourth was that I am finally at a point in my life where the things like money or my husband being in school are no longer hindrances to my deciding what to finally do about my singing.
So, I began to take some very huge risks. Granted, they may not seem like huge risks to you, but to me, having completely given up the hope of ever doing anything musical in my life again, having resigned myself to life behind a desk in the bland banking world, this was a big deal. I started taking voice lessons again. I actually found a voice teacher--someone who was willing to work with me--and started working again. And, surprisingly, I found that it was NOT traumatizing (for the first time ever) to work on my voice. This teacher was not sabotaging me. This teacher could help me through my technical issues--and I was finding success. In the past three months I have not cried once during a practice session (compare this to college when crying was an every day thing for me, and, I might add, totally out of character).
Simultaneously, I began to realize that I wanted to go back to grad school. So, I wrote a few emails to a few contacts at NDSU, and within two days, I had a voice teacher (see above), a grad school application, and an almost-sure acceptance into the graduate program at NDSU.
Yes:
I am going to grad school. For singing. This fall.
And, what is more, I have already applied, auditioned, and been accepted. The final stage of this process is yet to come--that is to see if I will be granted a teaching assitantship which will guarantee me a tuition waiver--which will fully secure my place in the ranks of students in the fall.
Three months ago I was not even remotely thinking about any of this stuff. But the Artists Way book--it gives you tasks that you have to complete every day. And one of those is writing "morning pages." These are a glorified journal where you get to write whatever you want as soon as you wake up in the morning. It can be your list of things to do, it can be how annoyed you are that everyone at work still tries to visit with you in the morning even though they know you aren't a morning person (the majority of my morning pages are of this version) the point being, it is a place where you don't have to judge yourself--but you can just let everything go.
Through this I really started to feel free to process. I didn't have anyone outwardly examining me, seeing if I was thinking "correctly," giving me the third degree to make sure I was making the right decision. I just got to think for myself, by myself.
And within three days I was writing volumes about how I wanted to go back to grad school, how I wanted to figure out what was wrong with me and why I couldn't move forward with my singing, why my experience in college was sooooooooooooo bad, and how legitimate the criticisms I've received in the past really were.
Conclusion:
Most of the feedback I received from two teachers in particular in college was complete bullshit from people who were either purposefully (in one case) and non-purposefully (maybe in the other) trying to sabotage me for their own reasons. Looking back, I can see now what was going on politically in the department, to an extent, that caused this. Partly, I can't see what caused it. I even had a teacher at the time who pointed it out to me, but I refused to acknowledge that I wasn't completely in control of the situation. Mostly though I am sure that my sharpest critic was just intimidated by the fact that I was a confident woman who wasn't afraid to get in his face, and he was unwilling to deal with that or something, so he tried to bring me down as much as possible. Well, he did his damage. But he can go to hell now, because I will not allow this to hold me back any longer. The truth is, by and large, I have really had nothing but good things said about my singing. Yes, there are issues with my voice--there are issues with everyone's voice. I had to let go of the few negative things said by this little man in my past so that I could move on.
It's funny, too, how once this ball got rolling--this creative recovery come quest for grad school, that everything really came together in just a matter of a few weeks.
So, that's it. It's pretty much a done deal. This is a decision I am making for me. And it is the right decision, the right time, the right situation, and the right frame of mind. I don't need to hear any naysaying or rationalizing or a third degree from anyone thinking I'm ruining my life or anything. I'm quite alright just the way I am.
Viva la Recovery!
posted by Erin at 4:14 PM
3 Comments:
I am 100% proud of you. God's leading; husband's encouragement; your own heart blossoming... Glory to the recovery of the soul!
Can I get an "AMEN??!!"
Glad to hear all of this...supremely happy for you...can't wait to hear about the assistantship.
ROCK ON.
BRAVO!
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