The Reluctant Receptionist

michael and his friends do something that they call the “finish game.” it’s where you make a piece of art—be it a song, a poem, a piece of writing—and the only rule is that you have to finish it that day. they critique each others’ work, and michael says that often the things that he thinks are weakest are what people actually really dig. i’m wondering if i shouldn’t do a personal “finish day” challenge with my blog. i feel like i’ve been updating it more often, only to see that it’s been a week since i’ve added anything to it. it’s not that i don’t have anything to say, it’s that i don’t have a lot that i’ve been feeling like sharing. i’ve been feeling very selfish with my feelings, trying to mull them over and digest them, learning how to once again be single in this bitch of a city. (but it’s a bitch that i can’t imagine myself leaving. when it hits me it feels like a kiss.)

i spent last weekend in DC with robin, for the first time since she started her new fancy lawyer job. it’s hard for me to imagine that my little sister is now a lawyer. it was one thing for her to be in law school—she was still in school, then, and i could imagine that she was still a baby. but now she’s taken the bar and she, as she told me last week, has “started her career.” what an odd feeling, i thought, knowing that a certain day is the start of your career. that you’ve been working toward this moment since you decided to go to law school, since you decided what kind of law you wanted to practice, and then there’s a day, august 30th or whatever, that you can point to and say, “this is the day i started professionally doing what i’m trained for.” maybe it seems so nebulous to me because i can’t point to a moment when i started singing, or because i don’t remember when i took my first “professional” audition, or because it seems, no matter how much singing i’m doing, that my “career” hasn’t started yet. what makes a singing career, really? is it getting paid to sing in church? filling your resume with roles done with friends’ companies? recitals? premieres? will i have started my career when i finally get reviewed by a big-time newspaper? or maybe this is it: maybe this is “my career” and the most it’s ever going to be.

in a way, that doesn’t seem so bad. getting to do all of these wonderful, creative things with people i like makes me luckier than most people out there, people stuck balancing books or stuffing oreo cookie boxes. it’s hard not to feel like something of a failure, though, with my sister “starting her career.” i’m nearing 30—don’t tell anyone, please—and it’s inevitable to reflect some. the time is nearing for me to tinkle or get off the pot when it comes to being a full-time professional singer, and i can see the train passing me by as i work and work a day job and a church job and fill every other moment with gigs or trying to get gigs. do i just keep doing what i’m doing, hoping that the right person will hear me? and if so, how long can i possibly keep up this pace?

robin and i had some pretty heavy talks this weekend, which is why all of this is on my mind. i’ve felt pretty loser-ish lately, because, as she put it, i “had a lot of life” happen this summer. fucking up my relationship, having my grandpa(s) die, being so so so broke all the time—this isn’t where i pictured myself at 29.4. yet, i’m not exactly sure where else to go: i can’t imagine not singing anymore, which means that going back to school for a complete field-change (if i could even decide what to go back to school for) isn’t really ideal. if i started a DMA now, i wouldn’t be done until i was 35 or 36, and even then there’s no guarantee i could land a teaching job—much less a teaching job anywhere i’d ever consider living.

and so i feel a little bit like i’m stuck in this holding pattern, waiting for the universe or for god or fate or friends or whatever to make it clear to me which way i should turn. i suppose that the best i can do in the meantime is to keep singing, keep auditioning, keep trying to be kinder, keep trying to be patient, keep trying to be good. it’s an uphill battle.