It may be because I grew up Catholic, or because I’m in a high-competition high-status low-pay profession, or just because the Flying Spaghetti Monster made me that way, but I’m a worrier. I worry about pretty much everything, and I pretty much always have some nagging thing that I’m worrying about. Money, practicing, auditions, writing, the general am-I-wasting-my-life-will-it-still-be-like-this-in-ten-years stuff.
(It’s probably genetic, actually. My father too is a major worrier.)
Part of it, of course, comes from the work I do. I have to practice two or three hours a day and I have to keep myself in practicing condition – which means I have to do yoga and try not to get sick, really, and since I teach various germy children and ride my bicycle in the rain, this is just another thing to worry about. I have to promote myself and try to get auditions and try to do WELL when I get them and try to keep doing SOMETHING to keep myself in the public eye, and I have to produce my own projects and do whatever support work for the band Ben needs me to do, other than actually singing in the band. I have to study the dramatic background of the arias and roles I sing. I have to keep up the repertoire I’ve already learned and keep adding new stuff. I have to keep using the above-high-C register of my voice to keep it open. I have to keep using the below-middle-C register of my voice to keep if from withering. I have to occasionally use my chest voice so it’s there if I need it. I have to keep up my trills even if there aren’t any in any of my repertoire right now, because I worked bloody hard to get them in the first place and it took weeks. And so on.
All of it adds up to a checklist of things to be done pretty much every day, in addition to the work I do for money (which is a whole separate checklist). I’m naturally pretty organized, so it’s not hard to keep track of; but it is, of course, a lot of nagging little worries and dropped threads.
So sometimes, like this morning when I stubbornly lay on the couch and refused to start working until 11:30*, I fantasize about what it would be like to have the kind of life where you go to work, come home, then just hang out. You know. You get up at 7:30, walk the dogs, go to work, work, come home, then watch TV or read or comment on blogs or go to the movies, then go to bed, then repeat.
Sometimes I take it even further and imagine the kind of life where you don’t do very much of anything at all except home-making tasks (though I pretty much suck at all of them except needlework/crafts and food preservation). The kind of life where you wake up, make breakfast for your husband/children, do chores/childcare and stuff all day, then watch TV/read/go to the movies in the evenings, then go to bed and repeat.
Would I still be like this, juggling eighty seven million little long-term tasks and projects? Would I constantly be worrying about everything falling apart?
I think about it, and the answer is Yes, of course I would. Because my dad has always as an adult had pretty much option A – a day job he loves followed by family, entertainment, and hobbies in the evenings – and he worries just as much as me, or probably more, since he worries about me and my sister and I, having no children, only worry about my dogs.
If I lived the A life, I’d be worrying about work, about money, and instead of feeling guilty about not practicing enough or not aggressively pursuing as many auditions as possible I’d be worrying about leaving the dogs alone all day or letting the house get too unkempt. If I lived the B life I’d be frazzled to death by having to spend my life on a zillion uncongenial chores and worrying about scarring my unfortunate offspring for life by being a crazy mom.
So I guess I should just chill the fuck out. No use worrying about things you can’t do anything about.
*Today being Canadian Thanksgiving, it wasn’t a big deal, since I didn’t teach today and could get everything done later.
Scintillator 