Consciousness shift

I was sitting in the terrace at Davies Symphony Hall last night at two minutes to seven, with the rest of the chorus, score in hand, waiting for the rehearsal to begin. All of a sudden, very clearly in my head I heard a voice (my voice):

"I don't want to do this anymore."

Huh? Wha-? Really? I thought.

It's the Verdi Requiem, I told myself. One of my all-time favorite pieces! It's got a dream team KILLER quartet of soloists (Sondra Radvanovsky, Dolora Zajick, Frank Lopardo, Ain Anger)! It's with one of the best orchestras in the world! It'll be awesome!

--and my mental response was

......'shrug'. 'So?'

I know I've vented my frustrations many times here with my choice of career, but this was the first time I'd really gotten such a clear message from my Self telling me it was long past time I considered moving on. I've joked about accounting, but (laugh if you like) there's something about a regular day job with a regular paycheck that's awfully attractive when you've done freelance all your life. Too, I know too well that singers, like any other person who relies on their body to do their job, have a finite shelf life, and that, now that I'm over 40, I should begin to at least consider what I want to be when I grow up, what I want to do with this one wild and precious life before my voice starts to veer into Florence Foster Jenkins territory....

So, the question in front of me now is the big cosmic, the one everyone asks, the one everyone MUST ask, whether in small scale or writ large in their lives, and more than once:

OK...Now what?

I don't have an answer to that yet. I have an idea of what I'd LIKE my life to look like, but the pesky issue of sustainable income casts a pall over my rosy domestic picture.

I am pretty sure of one thing: I no longer will be a full time singer. I feel better, not worse, when I say that, like a little popcorn jolt of YES! in my solar plexus.

I don't think I'll quit completely, either, especially without another source of income ready to go (anybody know a good sugar daddy?, she asked, only half-joking....

'sound of crickets'

OK, never mind....).

What is obvious is that I need to give this some serious thought. I'll keep ya posted.

And no, I won't be changing the blog title anytime soon. :-)

RM