Monday, May 9, 2011

Stress be gone!

I am so excited for this semester, nay, year to be done. My immediate reflections...  

Giving up choir president... feels like a burden has been lifted. The year always starts out so well. So motivated. Camp is the most satisfying organizational experience of the whole position. It's setting up the year by creating community... or a choir family. But as the year goes on, drama happens, people segregate into different groups, people get unhappy, people start siding on issues... eventually the family feeling disappears. It's so hard to be neutral. That's a pressure that comes from myself, nowhere else. Neutrality... needing to be beige so that other people can express their thoughts and opinions, so you can represent them or try to understand them. Needing to see the "problem" from empathetic angles in efforts to resolve. Sounds complicated? It is. Also, it is not my problem anymore. I don't have to care. I don't have to be anything for anyone anymore... the social lubricant, the offerer of apologies, the organizer, the leader... and that is LOVELY.

Giving up choir... is an unexpected relief. No more lunchtimes practicing chamber parts. No more part tests. No more choir dresses. No more worrying about blending. No more irritability about egos. No more being a disappointment as a poor sight reader. I will regain at least 7.5 hours a week. I will miss it, I'm sure, when the next choir concert comes. It was the cause of much of my musical growth. It was a place for expression. It was a place for imagination. It was a place for inspiration.

I am an expired gallon of milk, sitting in our musical fridge. I'm useless. I need to be tossed. I need out.

The music faculty has offered me great opportunities. They've taught me a lot and I'm sure there's a lot more I can learn from them. But it is time to move on. To find my next inspiration. To find the next place to land and make a life for myself.

These words from our last masterclass resound "You must remain teachable." I haven't been very good about that. I have built up the worth of my own opinion...   beyond what it should be. I have closed my mind. I have stopped being detail-oriented. And while I want to call this life being cyclical...  I worry that this negativity has stuck. This summer, I need to correct some erroneous patterns in thinking. Find love for everyone and find a way to express it genuinely.

So often we reflect what we're surrounded by. I worry that I've contributed to the negativity of an entire department. I can only hope that the next place that I find myself... I can be a rock instead of a mirror. I can take a crappy situation and make it work for me. I can productively change my world in a positive manner and let go of the negative people, thoughts, and habits.

And with all the business going on...   5 more credits next fall and I'm done! Wahoo!!!   But for now...I'll get back to work.