Hello all!
I'm still on the planet. There wasn't much to post about in the past 5 or so months, considering you'd be hearing a repeated mantra of "Got up early, practiced before work, did some work, practiced some more, went to rehearsal, went home to sleep. Repeat forever." No one wants to read that.
Well, the mantra appears to have been in vain. I had promised myself after college that I would keep pushing forward in my career goals, get into grad school, get my masters in performance, then figure things out from there. See if by the time I was 30 I was actually making a career out of playing horn. Looks like life caught up with me long before I expected it to.
I did go and do the grad school trips in February. I felt pretty good about my playing, but when the results finally came back in late March, it wasn't pretty: two waitlists and a rejection. Also a rejection from the one summer festival I threw an application out for (I figured I really ought to stay and work for the summer if I was going to stop having a job in the fall when I went back to school). When the rejection came, my horn teacher and I sat down and had a serious talk about what this means for me. His advice was to stop having a goal to make my money solely from playing horn. The cruel truth was that if I wasn't good enough to get into even a mid-level conservatory for grad school, there was no way I was going to stay afloat in a sea of very talented and hard-working horn players that are streaming out of conservatories and big name public schools.
I cried. I was angry. I wanted to know why so many people had told me that I had potential to make it as a performer, and encouraged me, when it felt like the whole time I had no chance at it. I started to play the what-if game, but before that took off, Chris and I had a good talk about how unhealthy that was, and started to work towards re-framing my thinking away from the pain of rejection and disappointment, and toward what happens next.
It hurt to admit it at first, but after about...oh four or five hours of being upset, that there was a tiny voice in the back of my head that was sighing out of relief. I had worked my butt off toward this goal, and while it didn't work out, it meant there were other things I could do instead. I could stay in the Puget Sound, building a career! I could finish the move out to Redmond (more on that in a bit) and stay put for a while. I could keep putting money away in savings thanks to my new-found money saving skills! I could take the money I had been putting aside to buy a triple horn to instead buy something that would make life easier: a car (more on that later as well).
As time has gone on, while I'm technically still waiting to hear from the two schools where I'm on the wait list, I've started to relax and take time to enjoy my time and hobbies more. I'm knitting lots more, though that has more to do with my commute length than anything else. My psoriasis has gotten way less severe because I'm no longer stressed and filled with guilt when I do anything less than three hours of practicing a day (I still aim for at least one a day). I'm still taking gigs, still playing in a few different groups, but now I'm playing because I want to play, and not just because I desperately want to put pieces on my music resume. I can say no if I want, and that's okay.
So, in summary, I'm not aiming to play professionally 100% any more. I'm still aiming to be a great horn player, will keep working to improve my playing, and have actually really started the process of getting networked into some light freelancing in Seattle. With that, and the fact that I've moved to the suburbs, the time for a car has finally arrived. I'm still working to save for a decent down payment so I can get approved for a decent loan. While my credit is getting better every month, I'm still young, so getting good interest rates is tough. My goal is to find a car and get the ball rolling in the next couple months.
As for the move? Yup, I live out in Redmond. If someone had told me two or three years ago that I'd be moving this far outside Seattle, I would have thought they were crazy. There's no way I'd want to move out of the city! Well, I laugh to say it now, but I love living in the suburbs. Sure, if I need to pop over to the grocery store to pick up eggs, it's now going to take 30 minutes to walk the mile and a half to Safeway, and busing is basically impossible on weekends or outside regular commuting hours on the weekdays, but I love where I live. My apartment complex is everything I ever wanted in a living situation, but never could have afforded in Seattle. We have fitness centers, recreation centers, a tennis/basketball court, and three swimming pools! 24/7 maintenance on site, and the leasing office is open 9-6 every day. Oh, and security patrols every evening from 10 pm until 5 am, so if neighbors get rowdy, there's someone you can call and that can deal with it right away! But quiet isn't a problem out there...in spite of how many people live in the complex, many of them families, everything stays fairly quiet. Best part of living around families is that they're getting quiet and settled down for the night about the same time the college students would start getting ramped up for parties in my old place.
Oh, and I've already found a knitting group that meets not too far from my apartment on Sunday mornings, and have a standing invitation to join a spinning guild once my transportation changes when I get a car. Welcoming!
In summary, western WA is going to be dealing with me for a while longer, and I'm looking forward to seeing how this new routine and lifestyle turn out.
