I haven’t written anything in a while, largely due to a lack of topics. I have a list of potential topics I keep on my desk, but haven’t decided yet how to approach the few I haven’t used. This particular topic was not one of those; it was generated by the death a couple of weeks ago of a former teacher and friend. This means it is considerably more personal than I generally go on here, but then, isn’t this blog supposed to be about self-discovery?
As noted, a couple of weeks ago, my entire community was shocked to learn of the death of our beloved high school choral director. He taught at my school for 57 years and influenced not just the hundreds of thousands of students that passed through his classroom but also many, many more beyond that. I won’t go into too much detail here as it has been thoroughly covered in the news and on Facebook; what I want to note here is his passion for what he did. He was one of the few people in this world that truly loved his job. I remember being greatly inspired by this passion when I was under his tutelage.
I remember, all those years ago, making up my mind that I needed to find a career that I was passionate about, something I loved doing. Every day I saw people going to work their 9 to 5 job and hating every minute of it. At the time, I was completely flummoxed as to why people would do that. The only answer I could give myself was that too many people are concerned only with making money so that their bills could be paid and their family could have food. That is most certainly the case now, with jobs being few and far between and wages going down. At times, we all must put pleasure aside in order to provide. But we can’t lose focus on the long term while we are trying to get by in the short term.
Sitting in that chorus room, I learned to follow my dreams and passions. I admit that to most, this sounds like idealistic nonsense, but that is because most people forget about their dreams in order to provide. So much importance is put on money that we forget about ourselves. Money has never held much importance for me; as long as I can pay my bills, have bread on the table and have enough extra for a treat now and again, I’m fine. Unfortunately, over the years, I have fallen victim to the same trap of using material possessions to fill a void in my life that so many others do.
The inspiration I felt in that room, that I gained from him, made me dream of following in his footsteps and becoming a music teacher myself. I planned to enroll in a music education program as soon as I left high school. But life doesn’t always work out as planned. It’s been nearly ten years since I graduated high school, ten years since I went out into the world. I had to amend my dreams a bit due to them not being entirely feasible, but after eight years and one miserable college career, I took a leap of faith and went back to school to begin following a dream that predated my musical ambitions; I decided to become a writer.
Now, the path of a writer is not exactly paved with gold, so I made the decision to pursue an additional degree in Electronic Media; the reasoning behind this is twofold. First, I clearly need a source of income so that I can eat and pay the bills. Secondly, and in some ways more importantly, I see media production as something to supplement my writing; being able to produce my own works will give me a great advantage.
I put a lot of thought into this arrangement, and I think it can work, but I’m concerned about balancing the two. There are a multitude of paths my career could take, and all them will require devoting quite a bit of time to my work. But my writing requires a great deal of time as well. I enjoy creating things in many different mediums, but my ideas take a lot of time to ferment and develop. Anyone who’s ever worked a full shift at any job knows how difficult it can be to motivate one’s self to work on a project after you’ve just worked all day, and I already have difficulty motivating myself to work on my creative ambitions. So the question becomes how do I balance my life between passion and pay?
This question of balancing passion and pay is something that almost everyone must encounter eventually. I’m only just hitting it now; in the years preceding my current stint in college, I mostly just worked dead-end 9 to 5 jobs, hating almost every minute of them. I certainly never planned the path my life has taken; as I’ve already noted, I planned a very different path but, as the old saying goes, life is what happens while you’re making plans. But I’ve chosen a new path, going back to school to end that cycle of crap jobs, a cycle that I swore I’d never start.
There is a third factor in this balancing act, and that is having a personal life. Yes, my professional and creative goals are important, but I have things I want to accomplish in my personal life as well, most notably to have a family. Over the past decade, I’ve not had much of a personal life due to working full time and dealing with very difficult personal issues. But now many of my problems are behind me and I feel that it is time to start having the life I’ve never had, that I couldn’t have before.
So now I just need to figure out how to balance professional, creative and personal. I suppose that only with time will I learn the best way to accomplish this. I am, needless to say, concerned about my own ability to do this, but I don’t think it’s impossible. I’ve seen many people, including my high school choral director, accomplish exactly that. I know that it can be done. But between my distinct lack of experience with these things and the fact that I’ve always had a rather nasty inferiority complex, I find myself questioning my abilities and even whether I’ve chosen the right path.
Frankly, these are things that I should have gone through years ago. I won’t sit here and try to rationalize my way out of it, but for one reason or another, that’s not the path my life took. But I can’t keep hiding out in this house, my childhood home, waiting for my life to get going. I need to be brave like the man who taught me to sing so many years ago. He didn’t shy away from life; he’d always face it head on. I’ve been through a lot of hell in my 27 years in this world and, until now, I too have done my best to face it head on; problems can’t be ignored forever and mine were too big to ignore anyway. Now the only things holding me back are my own fears and sense of inadequacy.
There’s more to this than a balancing act, however. I’m still concerned that I’m not devoting enough of my life to pursuing my dreams. My schoolwork already takes up so much time that I have to resort to picking at my novel and other projects between classes or late at night. Yes, I get some work done, but there’s already so much clutter on my mind at those times that I have a difficult time getting my mind to focus. Am I doing the right thing, letting my dreams take a back seat for a bit so I can get my career going? And what about my personal goals? I’ve seen many people destroy their personal lives because they focused solely on their career. I like to think that going into media production will only help my dreams, enabling me to self-produce at least some of my work, but I suppose that only time will tell what effect it will have on my personal life; heck, for all I know, I’ll meet the girl of my dreams by focusing more on my career for a while.
The more I think (and write) about this, the more apparent it becomes that the best course of action right now is to stay the course. That isn’t to say that I should just sit here twiddling my thumbs, however. I’ve been sitting around waiting for the past ten years, and I’m done with that. My instincts are well developed, and if I listen carefully, I’ll know when to stay put and when to leap.
Of the many things I learned from my high school choral director, there is one springing to mind right now that applies to the current situation and to life in general. When we would sight-read a piece of music, whether preparing for a contest or learning a piece for an upcoming concert, he would always say “Don’t stop, be aggressive, look ahead.” That is one of the best pieces of advice I’ve ever been given. Never stop yourself, take control of your life, and always keep an eye out for things on the horizon. He always seemed to live by that mantra, and it served him well. I think it’s high time I took that mantra on as well.
I’ve come a long way since I studied under that man. I was a small, smart-mouthed, shy boy with one of the biggest inferiority complexes you’ve ever seen. But my teacher saw potential in me; he had a gift for seeing potential in people even when they couldn’t see it in themselves. Without him, I wouldn’t be the man I am today. But there’s still a long path ahead of me, and where it goes, I don’t know. Even now, I have a lot of worries and concerns (not to mention the fact that my brain tends to be rather pessimistic) but I can’t keep second-guessing myself every step of the way; that behavior has kept me paralyzed for the last ten years. It’s time I stopped worrying about a what-if that might never happen and started living.
My dreams and goals are somewhere on the road ahead; all I have to do is keep moving and I will attain every single one of them. I just have to stop beating myself up over every little thing and have faith in myself for once; feeling sorry for myself will just make the wait longer and harder.
I remember, all those years ago, making up my mind that I needed to find a career that I was passionate about, something I loved doing. Every day I saw people going to work their 9 to 5 job and hating every minute of it. At the time, I was completely flummoxed as to why people would do that. The only answer I could give myself was that too many people are concerned only with making money so that their bills could be paid and their family could have food. That is most certainly the case now, with jobs being few and far between and wages going down. At times, we all must put pleasure aside in order to provide. But we can’t lose focus on the long term while we are trying to get by in the short term.
Sitting in that chorus room, I learned to follow my dreams and passions. I admit that to most, this sounds like idealistic nonsense, but that is because most people forget about their dreams in order to provide. So much importance is put on money that we forget about ourselves. Money has never held much importance for me; as long as I can pay my bills, have bread on the table and have enough extra for a treat now and again, I’m fine. Unfortunately, over the years, I have fallen victim to the same trap of using material possessions to fill a void in my life that so many others do.
The inspiration I felt in that room, that I gained from him, made me dream of following in his footsteps and becoming a music teacher myself. I planned to enroll in a music education program as soon as I left high school. But life doesn’t always work out as planned. It’s been nearly ten years since I graduated high school, ten years since I went out into the world. I had to amend my dreams a bit due to them not being entirely feasible, but after eight years and one miserable college career, I took a leap of faith and went back to school to begin following a dream that predated my musical ambitions; I decided to become a writer.
Now, the path of a writer is not exactly paved with gold, so I made the decision to pursue an additional degree in Electronic Media; the reasoning behind this is twofold. First, I clearly need a source of income so that I can eat and pay the bills. Secondly, and in some ways more importantly, I see media production as something to supplement my writing; being able to produce my own works will give me a great advantage.
I put a lot of thought into this arrangement, and I think it can work, but I’m concerned about balancing the two. There are a multitude of paths my career could take, and all them will require devoting quite a bit of time to my work. But my writing requires a great deal of time as well. I enjoy creating things in many different mediums, but my ideas take a lot of time to ferment and develop. Anyone who’s ever worked a full shift at any job knows how difficult it can be to motivate one’s self to work on a project after you’ve just worked all day, and I already have difficulty motivating myself to work on my creative ambitions. So the question becomes how do I balance my life between passion and pay?
This question of balancing passion and pay is something that almost everyone must encounter eventually. I’m only just hitting it now; in the years preceding my current stint in college, I mostly just worked dead-end 9 to 5 jobs, hating almost every minute of them. I certainly never planned the path my life has taken; as I’ve already noted, I planned a very different path but, as the old saying goes, life is what happens while you’re making plans. But I’ve chosen a new path, going back to school to end that cycle of crap jobs, a cycle that I swore I’d never start.
There is a third factor in this balancing act, and that is having a personal life. Yes, my professional and creative goals are important, but I have things I want to accomplish in my personal life as well, most notably to have a family. Over the past decade, I’ve not had much of a personal life due to working full time and dealing with very difficult personal issues. But now many of my problems are behind me and I feel that it is time to start having the life I’ve never had, that I couldn’t have before.
So now I just need to figure out how to balance professional, creative and personal. I suppose that only with time will I learn the best way to accomplish this. I am, needless to say, concerned about my own ability to do this, but I don’t think it’s impossible. I’ve seen many people, including my high school choral director, accomplish exactly that. I know that it can be done. But between my distinct lack of experience with these things and the fact that I’ve always had a rather nasty inferiority complex, I find myself questioning my abilities and even whether I’ve chosen the right path.
Frankly, these are things that I should have gone through years ago. I won’t sit here and try to rationalize my way out of it, but for one reason or another, that’s not the path my life took. But I can’t keep hiding out in this house, my childhood home, waiting for my life to get going. I need to be brave like the man who taught me to sing so many years ago. He didn’t shy away from life; he’d always face it head on. I’ve been through a lot of hell in my 27 years in this world and, until now, I too have done my best to face it head on; problems can’t be ignored forever and mine were too big to ignore anyway. Now the only things holding me back are my own fears and sense of inadequacy.
There’s more to this than a balancing act, however. I’m still concerned that I’m not devoting enough of my life to pursuing my dreams. My schoolwork already takes up so much time that I have to resort to picking at my novel and other projects between classes or late at night. Yes, I get some work done, but there’s already so much clutter on my mind at those times that I have a difficult time getting my mind to focus. Am I doing the right thing, letting my dreams take a back seat for a bit so I can get my career going? And what about my personal goals? I’ve seen many people destroy their personal lives because they focused solely on their career. I like to think that going into media production will only help my dreams, enabling me to self-produce at least some of my work, but I suppose that only time will tell what effect it will have on my personal life; heck, for all I know, I’ll meet the girl of my dreams by focusing more on my career for a while.
The more I think (and write) about this, the more apparent it becomes that the best course of action right now is to stay the course. That isn’t to say that I should just sit here twiddling my thumbs, however. I’ve been sitting around waiting for the past ten years, and I’m done with that. My instincts are well developed, and if I listen carefully, I’ll know when to stay put and when to leap.
Of the many things I learned from my high school choral director, there is one springing to mind right now that applies to the current situation and to life in general. When we would sight-read a piece of music, whether preparing for a contest or learning a piece for an upcoming concert, he would always say “Don’t stop, be aggressive, look ahead.” That is one of the best pieces of advice I’ve ever been given. Never stop yourself, take control of your life, and always keep an eye out for things on the horizon. He always seemed to live by that mantra, and it served him well. I think it’s high time I took that mantra on as well.
I’ve come a long way since I studied under that man. I was a small, smart-mouthed, shy boy with one of the biggest inferiority complexes you’ve ever seen. But my teacher saw potential in me; he had a gift for seeing potential in people even when they couldn’t see it in themselves. Without him, I wouldn’t be the man I am today. But there’s still a long path ahead of me, and where it goes, I don’t know. Even now, I have a lot of worries and concerns (not to mention the fact that my brain tends to be rather pessimistic) but I can’t keep second-guessing myself every step of the way; that behavior has kept me paralyzed for the last ten years. It’s time I stopped worrying about a what-if that might never happen and started living.
My dreams and goals are somewhere on the road ahead; all I have to do is keep moving and I will attain every single one of them. I just have to stop beating myself up over every little thing and have faith in myself for once; feeling sorry for myself will just make the wait longer and harder.
