there’s a lull

i’m feeling incredibly lazy. it’s not a feeling i particularly relish, and yet i’m succumbing to it quite easily.

i’m actually not being very lazy at all. since i got home, i’ve looked up various videos on youtube, popped out an email, done some online window shopping, bought some music on itunes, and now i’m going to work on adding some content to my page on facebook and working on a new (second attempt) website design for a friend, and possibly do some work on designing my own. i even managed to wander to the kitchen and nuke some leftovers for dinner. so i’m fairly occupied, and not vegetating in front of telly or something awful like that.

and yet i feel terribly lazy, because i didn’t practice. i’ve barely made an attempt at singing. i muttered a few lines in the car on the way home, along with a laid-back song that always comforts. i got home, plopped into my desk chair and got a few things done while waiting for hot water for tea, fully intending to practice after drinking some of that tea. and here i am an hour and a half later, with absolutely no ambition to practice. i hardly want to sing.

i’m just tired. it’s really difficult to want to sing after being at work all day. i’m struggling to keep my eyes open at the moment – not very conducive to good singing. so instead i think i’ll just sit here in a lull and try to do something productive on the computer, and when i have my lesson tomorrow, maybe i won’t feel so lazy.

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

black artist

i took a jaunt over to the art gallery on campus, and this lovely list graced the wall of the gallery coordinator’s office (btw, the gallery coordinator is super awesome – love her style):

credit: keri smith

1. constantly compare yourself to other singers: guilty. i do it all the time. usually leads to singer’s depression, especially when comparing to famous singers, which is just silly and futile.
2. talk to your family about what you do and expect them to cheer you on: this isn’t really a problem for me anymore. when i first decided to study music instead of biology, there was a fit of hesitation from the family, but once they realized that’s what i really wanted to do, they did cheer me on (even though i’m fated to live in a cardboard box and eat top ramen – luckily i’ve remedied that for the time being with a good day job that i actually enjoy).
3. base the success of your entire career on one note/song/mistake/recital/performance/rehearsal: oh i am so good at this. i have one bad performance and i instantly believe i could never be successful. lucky me.
4. stick with what you know: now i really deviate from this one, partly because i really don’t know anything! i’m all over the place as far as repertoire is concerned, and i’d really like to be a “mixed genre” artist. i have fingers in classical, musical theatre, rock, cabaret, and in those categories, many other pies.
5. undervalue your expertise: geez, it’s like this woman was thinking of me when she wrote this. i really need to stop doing this one. bad bad bad claire!
6. let money dictate what you do: if anything i’d half underline this. if i’d let money dictate what i do, i wouldn’t have majored in music in  the first place. but, it’s a valid concern. i’d like to hope though that i wouldn’t pass up something i’d love to do just because there isn’t enough money in it.
7. bow to societal pressures: again, i would have stayed with biology if this was a problem. since high school, i’ve been pretty big on being my own person, and that last thing i wanted to do was become what society wanted me to be. and so now i’m a singer. and, ironically, somehow society seems to be okay with that.
8. only do work that your family would love: hehehehehehehehehehehehe…
9. do whatever the client/company/director/patron/etc. asks: i haven’t really run into this problem yet as i’m a fledgling singer.
10. set unachievable/overwhelming goals. to be accomplished by tomorrow: everything i expect of and for my voice is reasonable. expecting it to happen overnight is not, and that’s where i cause myself a lot of unnecessary grief. time to cut that out.

so, i’m doing a fairly good job of not being a miserable singer. maybe i can un-underline a couple of these items in the next year?

the entry level approacheth, so what?

you’re probably going to get a few blog posts from me on this topic in the next few months. life after college. it looms. so? everyone is freaking out around me about what they are going to do, yet, i’ve concluded that i’ll figure out my life eventually, and i can find a job in the mean time, so what’s the big deal? seems the only thing people want to know these days is “what’s next?”

in my senior seminar we’re reading excerpts from michael ball’s the entry level. we read the prologue last week and i had major issues with it, and i’m already starting to get irritated with chapter three, so i think i’ll blog while reading. kill two birds with one stone.

i love this little bit on page 41.

But even then, I’m sorry to say, you’ll probably never fully recapture that light, carefree school feeling as you push further into the unsmiling reality of corporate life; there’s good reason, remember, that everyone is so buttery and nostalgic about college. … Over time, the simple pleasures of studenthood – which probably still maintain their pull in large measure – will seem, well, just too simple, and you’ll conveniently romanticize those years in your memory as have those before you (myself included).

how depressing can you get? he basically just said that once you graduate college, life sucks. and here i am actually looking forward to my life after college. i have been itching to get out, to get an apartment, play house, settle down with a husband and kids, the works. sounds pretty awesome to me. of course there will be bumps along the way, and those days when work is downright awful, but overall, i think the prospects are quite lovely.

i’m also not so happy that michael ball seems to assume a lot about me, and he’s getting most of it incorrect.

Instead, your original directional choice came when your under-grad academic advisor finally insisted that you select a subject to major in. Given the popularity of “undeclared” among coeds up to that crossroads – right behind its closest substitute, psychology, in which I’m a proud bachelor – and noting how this fickle bunch tends to change majors between one and three times even after picking a route, odds are that you had a rocky start on the path of big-time decision-making.

excuse me? i believe it actually went like this. i got accepted to ndnu. i declared a major. i started my first class. the only change i made to my major was the concentration – from musical theatre to classical – and then i added a minor. yes michael, some of us actually do know what we want to study when we start college.

i think i’m almost annoyed that he’s trying to analyze this whole post-college state in the first place; the fact that he thinks all graduates are going through the same things he did makes it even worse. how dare he presume he knows what i’m going through? why am i getting so worked up about a book?!

the rest of chapter three pretty much lays out how awful entry level work is. gee michael, thanks.

this book feels a little irrelevant to me anyway, as i’m not really looking to get into corporate america. in fact, i think i’d like to avoid it as much as possible. i don’t really picture myself drooling in a cubicle all day. i’m on chapter four now, and find myself drifting further and further to sleep. i may need to stop reading this before i go into coma. sorry michael.

i think i have a plan …

i might actually have it figured out. possibly.

three months to graduation and all of us seniors are trying to figure out what to do with our lives. as i’ve expressed on this blog before, i have so many interests it’s not only hard to decide what to do at what time, but also what i should make a career and what i should maintain as a hobby.

i’m in this lovely class called senior seminar which is geared specifically toward communications majors (i’m a minor, but i needed to substitute a class to finish the requirements). here’s a quick look at the class from another blog i contribute to:

“I don’t know what I want to do with my life.”

“This just isn’t what I expected I’d be doing by now.”

“I just can’t seem to make up my mind!”

“I really want to go for it, but I’m afraid I’ll fail, and then what?”

That is just a minute chunk from my Senior Seminar yesterday, in which we all unloaded our anxieties surrounding our graduation and eventual plunge into the workforce or grad school. It was not a pretty sight: emotions splattered across the room like a horrific scene from CSI. But for a moment, as I heard eleven other people speak the same words that have been racing through my mind for the past few weeks, nay, the past few years, it was refreshing (I’d say “like the crisp lemon-lime taste of Sprite”, but I think that would be going a bit far with the product placement for one paragraph).

so last class my fellow students made lists of things they do NOT want (i missed out on this activity because i was out with the stomach flu, so i did a quick catch-up in class today) and then finding the flip side, things they do want. we fleshed that out today, and then our teacher asked to pick three or four things from the flip side, the things we DO want, that are the most important. i came up with:

• find something fun and challenging
• learn to be independent
• figure out how to balance my relationship (w/ my boyfriend) as a priority against the rest of my life
• cultivate my passions

we all shared these points, and then our teacher asked if these priorities fit in with careers we have considered. for example, someone who wants to have weekends free probably shouldn’t be an event planner. we have started compiling ideas of people we’d like to job shadow, for a project we’ll be doing later this month. this got my mind going, and i drifted off into my own little place, planning out my life. here’s what i’m looking at…

first, specifically looking at the point about balancing my personal life with the rest of my life. i realized a couple of weeks ago that while my career aspirations have fluctuated throughout my life, one thing has remained constant. since i’ve been a kid, i’ve wanted to grow up, get married, have kids, the works. relationships are really important to me, and i’m not about to throw away something good for a possible chance at a glamorous career. keeping that in mind, i think i’ve come to terms with the fact that i would not make a good true professional opera singer – one who travels the majority of the year from state to state and country to country. i’d get lonely, as silly as that sounds. it would be fun for the first year maybe, but ultimately i’d want to be home with my boyfriend/husband (and my kids if i had them). ideally i would prefer to make a career as a singer solely in the bay area, with possibly the occasional excursion outside.

i’ve also considered the stress of making money with music, and i really don’t know that i could handle it. think about it: you’re depending on singing to pay the bills – if you’re not cutting it, you’re going to be without a roof and nursing a rumbling tummy. perhaps i’m just chickening out, but singing could be better for me as a major passion and hobby.

that being said, i don’t intend on abandoning singing and music, and i still want to pursue singing as a career. i actually have some fabulous ideas of what i could do – i won’t get into those now. but i do have a plan. that plan is to graduate (yay!) and try to make the music thing work. spend a couple of years at that. if it works out, wonderful. if not, i can pursue another interest that i developed a few years ago: special education. i worked at a school for developmentally disabled students for three summers as an instructional assistant, and absolutely loved it. i loved the kids, i loved the work. it was fabulous. i can see myself being happy as a teacher by day, and pursing musical interests in the evenings and on weekends, maybe being in a choir or two, organizing occasional recitals for fun, possibly even having my own group (that is sort of related to my earlier comment of the music ideas i’ve had). my teaching would pay the bills, and leave me time to still pursue music in various forms, and spend time with my family. i’d work toward my master’s degree and my credential at the same time.

someone very smart told me that if i can do anything else beside singing very well, that i should do that (i think someone very smart told him that as well). i’ve also been apprised of the risks and sacrifices and so forth that come with pursuing a professional music career, and considering my personality and my priorities, i may not be prepared to do such things. what’s important to me is that i cultivate my passions as well as my relationships, and if it comes down to it, i’d rather maintain a passion as a serious hobby rather than let that passion become a career that destroys my relationships. it’s all still a big ball of confusion, but somehow, as graduation moves closer, aspects of this mess become very clear – and the rest of it just gets more and more convoluted. oy vey!

conflicted

there comes a time in every person’s life when he or she has to figure out what to do for the next few decades, and that time is coming upon me. graduation is imminent. for the first time in about 19 years or so, i will not be a student. i’m getting bombarded left and right with the question, “what are you going to do?” well, there’s what i WANT to do, and what i may HAVE to do. what i WANT to do is just sing. i want to sing baroque opera. i want to sing trouser roles. i want to give early music recitals. and maybe, just maybe, i’ll give a cabaret show here and there.

there’s a joke that runs among those of us who chose artistic vocations, a joke best summed up by the title of a certain facebook group “i picked a major i like, and one day i will probably be living in a box.”so the conundrum becomes – do i throw myself completely into my art and starve, or compromise my art a little by finding a non-artisitc career? i have so many options to choose from that my mind is boggled. i toyed with the idea of staying on here to get my credential in special education. i’ve worked at a special ed school, and i absolutely loved the kids. there are certain aspects of staying here that may or may not guarantee me having housing and a job as well. the downside is that the classes would be in the evening, so i wouldn’t be able to be in any shows, essentially putting off my opera progress for at least a year. how silly is that? on the other hand, i need to eat, and i need to have a roof over my head. there is also the option of graduate school, but i’m not sure i want to throw myself into that sea right away.

then there are additional factors thrown on top of that. every persion has many different identities that they fulfill. for example, i’m a student, a daughter, a sister, a friend, a singer, etc.. one day i’d like to be a wife and a mother. and this is where we reach my second conundrum. i was in my voice lesson last week, and my teacher made a plea that really put me off, and it has been worming its way through my brain ever since. my teacher was absolutely pleased with my work, and started to gush about how he thought i could have a major career, and then – here’s the kicker – he said that he knew that i enjoyed my relationships with men, and that that was fine, but that i shouldn’t just settle down and get married and have kids. he didn’t want that to get in the way of my potential career. i see the merit in that, but that also causes a major conflict for me, because a major part of my identity is comprised of my relationships, and getting married and having kids has been a goal that i want to reach. so the next question is: do i let my career get in the way of my family, or my family get in the way of my career? is there a way i can have both. and then i ask: do i want to have a simple music career, singing in churches and other little paid gigs, do i want to cover the entire bay area, or do i want to conquer america and europe? how far can i go musically without compromising my future romantically? so many questions, and no answers!

so this is where i am, and i’m not any closer to knowing what i’ll be doing come may. i don’t want to sell out, on either front. this is far beyond a headache – it’s a soul ache.

phone phobia

*gasp* two entries in one day?! it’s miraculous. i had to make this quick (at least, i’m intending it to be quick – knowing me, it may not be) entry after a youtube user commented on a video i made a couple of months ago. at the time, there was a video chain on youtube, in which a user would be tagged, and then would make a video discussing five things about himself. i was eventually tagged, and made the following video:

in the video, one of the facts i revealed about myself is that i am afraid of phones. more specifically, i am afraid of talking on the phone. i fear receiving calls from people i don’t know, and in many cases even from people i do know. i fear making the same calls even more. the only people who do not cause me anxiety EVER when making a call are my mom and boyfriend, followed by my dad and my sister. outside of them, i experience varying levels of anxiety when interacting with individuals on the phone. i just figured i was silly, but the person who commented on my video cited a definition provided on a website, and when i searched “phone phobia” i found the site he used, as well as other cites with people discussing their own phone phobias. i do not completely fit the description of a person experiencing phone phobia, so i will say that i have a mild case, but it does impair me in my everyday life, especially in business related matters. i was somewhat surprised to see that there are even websites offering solutions to this phobia, such as hypnosis (although, why should i be surprised? there are so many companies out there trying to capitalize on every single little problem imaginable).

i don’t know how much to trust this website, but even though it may not be an authoritative source, i am convinced that phone phobia is a real problem, and most likely can be defined as follows (from wiki.hypertwins.org):

Phone-phobia (alternate keywords: phonephobia, telephobia), is a psychological condition in which one experiences extreme fear or avoidance of using the telephone. The fear may be more intense with regard to either making or receiving phone calls; in the latter case, it can intensify to the point where the phone-phobic is afraid even to listen to voice-mail (answering machine) messages.

The website poses the following as possible reasons for the phobia: fear of confrontation, fear of ridicule, fear of miscommunication (being misunderstood, misunderstanding the other person, forgetting what you wanted to convey, and forgetting what was said), and fear of irreversibly prejudicing someone based on the sound of their voice. From what I can tell, my fear of talking on the phone stems mostly from the first two, and somewhat from the third. I’ve found that my fear occurs most often when having to speak with a business or organization. When I am asked my my parents to call someone, I often will suddenly get hot, feel extremely claustrophobic and uncomfortable, am overcome with a feeling of dread/doom, and if the request persists I usually get upset, usually through crying for no reason, and often uncontrollably. I even avoid making simple phone calls like ordering pizza, and will often pass that job on to someone else if possible. My mom is afraid that I won’t call the hospital if I am experiencing a serious medical emergency.

I don’t really have a reason for why I am so afraid of the phone. Seeing the phone itself does not cause me anxiety; the potential situation of having to talk on it does. I have been this way ever since I was a kid. I think it is a trait that has carried over from the days when I was extremely shy (something most people won’t believe, as I am usually very loud and extroverted). I have been known to even be afraid of calling my own grandparents at times, and other extended family members, even some of my own friends.

This is something that has been in my mind recently because the use of the phone is becoming more of a need in my life, due to my career path. As a singer, I need to start networking, and much of this has to be done by calling churches and other organizations to get jobs. I have the numbers written down, I just can’t bring myself to call them. I’m trying to come up with every alternative in my mind, but I know that ultimately the phone calls will have to be made. I’ve gotten by with email for the past few years for most of my personal and work related communications, but so many people rely on the telephone. I am also pursuing a minor in Communications at my college, and will be doing Communications work there as well. This will also require phone calls, but I am not worried about that so much – I’m starting to get used to making phone calls on behalf of someone else in a work environment. However, the music networking calls are definitely going to be an issue that I’m going to have to sort out.

that’s all on that subject for now, but please contribute your thoughts.

two things before i finish this – first, this definitely was not a quick blog, and second, notice how i started out in my usual all-lowercase style, then morphed into professional typing, and now i am back again in my lowercase style. tsk tsk.

the trials of summer

almost one month into my summer vacation, it is finally solidified that i am going to, for the first time, really live the life of a starving student (minus the starving part). during the school year, my life is comfortable – i have a dorm room, classes, work, and rehearsals to keep me occupied, friends to grow with, and a modest income from my on-campus job to make the occasional purchase and enjoy a few fun events with my buds.

look at me now. i have been trying to get a summer job for the past few weeks, with no success. starbucks interviewed me, but as much as they loved me they cannot take on a seasonal worker. that seems to be the state of sacramento at the moment – plenty of jobs for teens and college age folks, but not if you’re like me – limited to working only through the end of august. i find myself with a paltry $45.01 in my checking account (and only a couple hundred in my savings, which i shouldn’t touch). what does this mean? i’m stuck here in sacramento all summer because i cannot afford gas. this means that i cannot trek down to san francisco to hang out with my friends (most of my friends are down there), and i cannot have a voice lesson with my teacher extrodianairre (except somehow i am going to scrape together the money to go for one on friday, because i am long overdue, and my school roommie and good friend jaclyn is having a birthday party on saturday, and i don’t want to miss that). i cannot make an excursion down to sf for an audition either. i cannot go out for lunch, or dinner, or see the wonderful array of foreign and indie films playing at the crest (even though it’s only $5.50 for students). i’ll have to to forgo haircuts, and unnecessary purchases (which isn’t the end of the world). somehow i need to make $40.01 last until the end of august (with some supplementary income here and there from odd jobs such as housesitting). true, i have a roof over my head (my parent’s house) and food at home, and for that i am grateful, but it will be a restricted life compared to that i experience during the school year. this is my first summer not working during college, and it is quite unfortunate.

i do have a couple temp possibilities, and i hope and pray those work out, because i really need a little extra monetary aid. once school starts again, i’ll have my on-campus job, and that will get me back into the swing of things, and i plan on applying at starbucks as well. for now i guess i’ll just have to deal.

(if my some magical chance you live in sacramento and want to give me temp work, please drop me a line! i have a resume ready to send)

more in my life – here are some of my recent youtube videos:

and, if you’re interested, here’s a little picture i threw together for my a cappella group,

ä’ kə-pěl’ə

yes, our quartet name is just the phonetic spelling of “a cappella”

best wishes to all *hug*