i'm a pretty impossible lady to be with.
What I have been up to lately:
-Biking, running, elliptical-machining, and generally trying to be more physically active so as not to feel like a complete slob, what with being mostly unemployed and all.
-Teaching voice lessons to people who can't read music.
-Sleeping in.
-Watching Red Eye. Repeatedly. And pretty much anything else Cillian Murphy has ever been in. I think I've run out of films of his I haven't seen, though, since he's only really been around since, like, 28 Days Later, and that was only six or so years ago.
-Wondering why my left pinkie has been numb for two weeks. The hell? Should I see a chiropractor? An acupuncturist? I'm not a fan of not being able to feel things, so I'm typing with that finger mostly in faith that I'll hit the right key, since I can't really feel it.
-Learning that I'm flat-footed.
I started this entry wanting to rant about something that was pissing me off, and now I can't, for the life of me, remember what it was. Something about marriage, I think, or weddings, or something. I've been having dreams about weddings lately, specifically my own, and it's upsetting. They're the kind of dreams that bleed into reality as you're waking up gradually, and they leave me feeling edgy and uncomfortable. The other night, in a hotel room on Mackinac Island, I dreamed the last two days before my marriage, and even though I can't remember who I was supposed to be marrying in the dream, I remember wondering why I ever said yes in the first place, and feeling trapped by obligations, since two days before is too late to back out, anyway. I don't think that this means that I'm necessarily afraid of getting married, but maybe it's more indicative of my feelings of being shunted down a specific path without being consulted. This is a really uncertain time for me, and I do feel as if my life has started to spin somewhat out of control, in terms of the career options left open for me. Money is, obviously, a big concern for me at the moment -- I don't have much, and although I don't spend all that much to begin with, I'm terrified that this life that I've chosen for myself will lead me down a path where I have to depend on other people, and the last thing I want is to be dependent on family and friends to fulfill my basic needs. I don't want to care what other people think of me, but my family members constantly use words like career and future and keep reminding me of alternative career choices but, damn it, this is what I chose and I'm going to do this or die trying, and I will not end up as a choir director somewhere in the midwest, wondering what my life would have been like if I had only been good enough to make it as an opera singer.
The last year was really hard on me, in terms of self-image, especially being constantly compared to one particular soprano who studied in the same studio. It felt like at every turn professors were setting us up to be measured against each other, whether by double-casting us in the opera or by making statements outright ("Brenna and K----- are both sopranos, and both seniors, but clearly they are in different phases of their development as singers"), and all I wanted was to be heard on my own terms and not hers. Despite what my teacher may have believed at any given point, I worked every bit as hard as her in the past two years, if not harder, since during college I fought through a major emotional breakdown, several existential crises, a stalker, a serious health scare, and the apparent two-month shutdown of my digestive system, and not once did I use any of those things as an excuse to get out of performing. I hid the hospital visits for as long as I could to prevent my teacher from finding out and treating me differently or preventing me from taking part in the same opportunities as everyone else. And when it came down to performing in the opera, I did every bit as well as the Pamina in the other cast, and still I felt as if my voice teacher had given up on me because I couldn't get into a graduate program on the first try.
I am taking this year off -- and not even really taking it off, since I'll still be taking classes and singing whenever I get the chance and working almost full-time -- because I need sometime to heal and to learn to accept myself and to learn not to let myself be affected by other people's insecurities. What I really need to do is to learn to say "Fuck you" to anyone who doubts that I can do this, because in the past four years I have gone through so much and survived, I am alive through all of it, and I need to accept that you can't meet everyone's expectations of you all the time and that sometimes just getting up in the morning is a miracle, and it is enough.
My favorite Brian Andreas/Story People quote:
Anyone can slay a dragon, he told me, but try waking up & loving the world all over again. That's what takes a real hero.
-Biking, running, elliptical-machining, and generally trying to be more physically active so as not to feel like a complete slob, what with being mostly unemployed and all.
-Teaching voice lessons to people who can't read music.
-Sleeping in.
-Watching Red Eye. Repeatedly. And pretty much anything else Cillian Murphy has ever been in. I think I've run out of films of his I haven't seen, though, since he's only really been around since, like, 28 Days Later, and that was only six or so years ago.
-Wondering why my left pinkie has been numb for two weeks. The hell? Should I see a chiropractor? An acupuncturist? I'm not a fan of not being able to feel things, so I'm typing with that finger mostly in faith that I'll hit the right key, since I can't really feel it.
-Learning that I'm flat-footed.
I started this entry wanting to rant about something that was pissing me off, and now I can't, for the life of me, remember what it was. Something about marriage, I think, or weddings, or something. I've been having dreams about weddings lately, specifically my own, and it's upsetting. They're the kind of dreams that bleed into reality as you're waking up gradually, and they leave me feeling edgy and uncomfortable. The other night, in a hotel room on Mackinac Island, I dreamed the last two days before my marriage, and even though I can't remember who I was supposed to be marrying in the dream, I remember wondering why I ever said yes in the first place, and feeling trapped by obligations, since two days before is too late to back out, anyway. I don't think that this means that I'm necessarily afraid of getting married, but maybe it's more indicative of my feelings of being shunted down a specific path without being consulted. This is a really uncertain time for me, and I do feel as if my life has started to spin somewhat out of control, in terms of the career options left open for me. Money is, obviously, a big concern for me at the moment -- I don't have much, and although I don't spend all that much to begin with, I'm terrified that this life that I've chosen for myself will lead me down a path where I have to depend on other people, and the last thing I want is to be dependent on family and friends to fulfill my basic needs. I don't want to care what other people think of me, but my family members constantly use words like career and future and keep reminding me of alternative career choices but, damn it, this is what I chose and I'm going to do this or die trying, and I will not end up as a choir director somewhere in the midwest, wondering what my life would have been like if I had only been good enough to make it as an opera singer.
The last year was really hard on me, in terms of self-image, especially being constantly compared to one particular soprano who studied in the same studio. It felt like at every turn professors were setting us up to be measured against each other, whether by double-casting us in the opera or by making statements outright ("Brenna and K----- are both sopranos, and both seniors, but clearly they are in different phases of their development as singers"), and all I wanted was to be heard on my own terms and not hers. Despite what my teacher may have believed at any given point, I worked every bit as hard as her in the past two years, if not harder, since during college I fought through a major emotional breakdown, several existential crises, a stalker, a serious health scare, and the apparent two-month shutdown of my digestive system, and not once did I use any of those things as an excuse to get out of performing. I hid the hospital visits for as long as I could to prevent my teacher from finding out and treating me differently or preventing me from taking part in the same opportunities as everyone else. And when it came down to performing in the opera, I did every bit as well as the Pamina in the other cast, and still I felt as if my voice teacher had given up on me because I couldn't get into a graduate program on the first try.
I am taking this year off -- and not even really taking it off, since I'll still be taking classes and singing whenever I get the chance and working almost full-time -- because I need sometime to heal and to learn to accept myself and to learn not to let myself be affected by other people's insecurities. What I really need to do is to learn to say "Fuck you" to anyone who doubts that I can do this, because in the past four years I have gone through so much and survived, I am alive through all of it, and I need to accept that you can't meet everyone's expectations of you all the time and that sometimes just getting up in the morning is a miracle, and it is enough.
My favorite Brian Andreas/Story People quote:
Anyone can slay a dragon, he told me, but try waking up & loving the world all over again. That's what takes a real hero.