Life after college?

I feel...lost. I have no idea what I want to do after I graduate, and it scares me. I really think I could grow into choral conducting, but I'm also really starting to enjoy directing. I feel like I have to pick one, and I don't know which one to choose. I don't want to choose either of them, really. I want to be really great at both of them, and study both of them after I graduate. But...that's the way college is. In undergrad, you're pretty good at a lot of things, and then in grad school, you become excellent in just one thing. That's the way the process works. But you know me. The way things have always been normally isn't good enough for me. And another thing is, I'm just too preoccupied just getting through the week to think about what I'm going to do in a year...a year...I graduate in a year from this coming December. That's really scary. I'm more scared than excited. I'm scared to be thrust into the real world with no real clue about what I'm doing. At least education majors have a goal: get a job, be a teacher. The only thing left to decide is where. But for me, I'm still trying to figure out the what. And I hate that. I've never really been certain about what I want to do with my life, my ultimate career goal. It's changed so much over the years, and I've never been like, "oh my gosh, I HAVE to do this!" It's always been just a neat idea that I might be able to do. I don't think that means I have no goals, or no ambition. I'm just really torn. I'm good at more than one thing, and so obviously that makes it harder to choose. My parents have always assured me of that, all the way from when I was in high school, agonizing over what to study in college, which of course affected where I wanted to go to school. They told me that it's okay to not know. It just means you like and are good at more than one thing, which is good.

But none of this helps me figure out my life. And that's the depressing part.

Decompressing

I haven't really had sufficient time to decompress after Fall Tour. It was a real growing experience for me. I feel like my voice grew and changed just over the course of the weekend. Of course, 8 performances in three days will do that to you. I wish that I hadn't been so tired the whole time. I would have like to have gotten to know the new Kapelle members better. But I was just so exhausted the whole time, and putting all my effort into just making it through the next concert or church service to really care that much about socializing. I think I'll be able to get to know everyone better on Spring Tour in March. That's really far away, I know, but spring tour is a lot more relaxed than fall tour is.

I think that this tour I was so exhausted that I had a really hard time connecting emotionally to the music. I felt like I was pretending to understand the character of the pieces.

The dominating feeling of the weekend was exhaustion. The whole weekend was kind of a blurr. I feel like it went by really quickly, but also that last Friday feels like two weeks ago. I really dislike fall tour because your whole sense of time is thrown off. You sing so much and the days are so long that you lose track of exactly how many days have passed. I'm kind of glad that I only have one fall tour left.

sigh

Okay, so I may have been overreacting a LITTLE. (I bet you didn't see THAT one coming. ;) ) Everything worked out okay, and I should have known that it would, because it always does. I really need to stop worrying. It's bad for my health.

People will always let you down, but God will never disappoint you.

I just wish people would do the things they said they would do, keep the commitments they said they would, come to the places they said they would be when they said they would be there. Some circumstances are unavoidable, I understand that. There are just somethings that you just have to cancel other things for. But this... can't you go and buy a car tomorrow? "I'm supposed to do this thing tonight, but I'll just tell her we have to do it later, because I don't feel like it, and I'd much rather buy a car." NEWS FLASH: sometimes we have to do things we don't feel like doing. Today, I didn't feel like singing in chapel with Resonanz, or going to work, but I did both of those because I said I would. This thing is really important to me. But I guess you're just too caught up in whatever the hell it is YOU want to give a damn about things that are important to other people.

I know that I'm a control freak, and that sometimes I wish I could control what other people do, make them do the things they said they would, keep their commitments. And I know that I can't make people keep their promises. Only God really keeps his promises. He's the only one that can truly do EVERYTHING he says he will. And I have to learn to be okay with just God keeping his promises. I have to learn to let that be a comfort to me. But it's not really a comfort at this point. It's still a disappointment that the people who say they'll do something won't really do it.

Little kids are amazing

Yesterday a girl in one of the preschool classrooms I work in asked me, "Why is your hair orange?"
"Why is my hair orange?" I repeated. "Because God made it that way."
"No!" she exclaimed.
"No? Then why is my hair red?"
"Because Jesus died on the cross. See?" And she pointed to the sculpture of Jesus on the cross on the outside of the Chapel.

At first I brushed this off as a cute little kid-ism, and it could certainly be said that she saw the sculpture and saw my hair and then drew a completely unrelated comparison. But I'm starting to see more in this explanation of why my hair is "orange." My hair is certainly this color due to my family heritage (red hair is a recessive trait, both of your parents have to have it, etc.) and also because God made it that way. I could have just as easily have had brown hair, like my mother. But I didn't. He decided to make me look different than a lot of people. This is one of the ways he made me unique. We all have different traits and gifts that God gives us, and this is one of the ways he sets us apart from each other. But we are also set apart in a different way.

He has set us apart through Jesus' death on the cross. We are his own. We are separate and different from everyone else. Holy-"set apart."

I could have taken this way too far, in a direction that doesn't even make sense. But her statement just seemed too profound to be just a little kid's nonsense statement.

Fear

I feel like shit. What else is new? I know I said I wasn't really looking forward to Kapelle Tour this weekend, but I've changed my mind. I'm kind of looking forward to doing nothing but sitting on a bus and singing all weekend. It'll be a nice escape from everything. Things haven't been so good. I won't go into detail, though. I just wish things were better. I feel really overwhelmed right now. And afraid.

Messiaen

Tonight I went to this concert at school with music all by Olivier Messiaen. It was amazing. The first half the the song cycle, Poemes pour Mi sung by Julia Bentley, who is an absolutely fantastic mezzo-soprano. Messiaen wrote the piece for his wife. "Mi" was his nickname for her. Sometimes on music he'd written he'd write a small staff at the top of the first page and write an "E" in it (the note, E) because essentially the third scale degree is "mi" in solfege. Sorry, I'm a music nerd. I'll try and put it more simply. In The Sound of Music when Maria is explaining music to the kids. "Do, a deer, a female deer. Re, a drop of golden sun. Mi, a name I call myself..." Okay, so "Do, Re, Mi." Mi was Messiaen's wife's nickname. Goodness! That took WAY too long.

Anyway, the first half was that song set, and the second half was Quartet for the End of Time. It's so amazing. It's based on the book of Revelation. What Messiaen tries to achieve is the sense of timelessness of heaven. I'm not going to even try to describe how amazing it is. You'll just have to listen to it yourself. It made my soul happy. I left with my soul filled to the brim with Messiaen's visions in color of the book of Revelation.

He had this disease where his senses got all mixed up. So he would hear a chord and see a color. Most of his pieces have color discriptions written in them, like "deep violet with gold flakes crossed with orange streaks," or something to that effect.

I could go on and on and on about all the things I learned at a Lectures in Church Music session this afternoon about Messiaen. But I won't bore you.

Long story short, Messiaen is wonderful. I feel peaceful tonight.

Cleaning the Apologies off of the Floor of my Depressed Heart

I cleaned my room today. I can actually see the floor. That's really exciting for me. It rarely ever happens. There's still stuff piled on shelves, but everything is off the floor, which I really enjoy. I hope to keep it approximately this clean for a long while. It'll be a big challenge for me. I'm not so good at keeping things clean

Although I did run the dishwasher, and empty the recycling, and sweep and swiffer the kitchen floor, and clean the stove yesterday. I've appeased my guilt for feeling like I haven't contributed to the apartment enough, although I did buy groceries on Thursday.

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I'm starting to think that it doesn't matter at all when I apologize, because I say I'm sorry so much. I'm the Boy Who Cried Wolf. Maybe I should just quit apologizing altogether and come off as a heartless, selfish bitch who thinks she's right no matter what she does. I could try being a bitch for a while.
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I'm really lonely. I'm not looking forward to fall tour next weekend. I love being in Kapelle, and I love performing at churches and stuff, but the bus rides are really lonely. I like everyone in Kapelle, but I don't have a real connection with anyone. Most everyone has a best friend that they sit with the whole time and talk and listen to music together and play travel games. And there I am sitting all by myself listening to my ridiculously depressing music and writing in my journal while trying not to cry.

It's not just Kapelle that's making me lonely. It's school in general. There's so many things to do, and I feel so behind on all of them. It's the weather, too. I hate it when it gets colder. I think I have seasonal depression. I get sad when it rains, and when it gets cold. Snow makes me happy, though. That's the only redeeming thing about winter. I love having a white blanket all over everything. It all feels new and refreshed. It's sunny outside today, but the slight chill overpowers it for me. I want to crawl into bed and cry myself to sleep and never wake up.
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EDIT: I feel very small.

"Drowning in God's love..."

I think that's how Pastor James put it. I like that phrase. I want to drown in God's love. I want to be so completely immersed in it that there's nothing else.

Sanctuary was wonderful this morning. There were two baptisms this morning, and one of them was an adult baptisms. I love baptisms in general, but I especially love adult baptisms. I understand infant baptism, but I sometimes wish that I remembered my baptism.

Communion made me dizzy this morning, and not because of the wine. I was dizzy with God's presence, His love. It was such an amazing feeling.

20 things to do before I die

1. Graduate college
2. Go to graduate school and get a Master of Music in Choral Conducting, and eventually a Doctoral degree
   
3. Be in an opera
4. Become a choir conductor at a college.
   
5. Conduct Gabriel Faure's Requiem
6. Travel Europe
7. Go to Africa/India/Asia to do mission work
8. Adopt a child
9. Marry the love of my life and be with him until I die.
10. Have approximately 3 children
11. Visit all 50 states
12. Learn to play the violin
13. Write a play and direct it
14. Pay off my student loans
15. Live in New York City for a year
16. Proclaim the word of God as much as I can
17. Drive Route 66
18. Visit New England in the fall (I hear it's beautiful that time of year)
19. Compose....something. lol.
    

Beware of Rant

So on Thursdays (yesterday) I work at the Early Childhood Center from 9-10, and from 11-1. During my break from 10-11 I was listening to my iPod and attempting to take artsy pictures by the Pillars. Except my tranquility was interrupted by two guys hanging out of their Lindemann Hall dorm room window shouting at people--their friends, strangers, just about anyone.

Don't they have things to do?! Don't they have, oh maybe, CLASS to go to?! Homework to do?! Books to read?! Things that are more constructive than SHOUTING AT PEOPLE FROM WINDOWS?!

Sigh...

Ok, I think I'm done ranting now. Thanks for listening.

button-pushers

I have these two friends who like to push my buttons. One of them is a really talented button-pusher, knowing just which things rile me up (but still make me laugh about it), but more importantly, where the line is, where to stop pushing buttons. The other friend is...not so talented at button pushing. The buttons he pushes rile me up but don't make me laugh, and he also doesn't really know when to stop. I know he's not malicious about it, but it's still pretty frustrating. Something happened the other day, and I snapped at him once, and then miraculously backed off. I kept my cool, and didn't say anything else about it. I was kind of proud of myself. Someone else even mentioned that instance to me, and they were proud of me too. Hey, I can actually keep my cool and stop myself from snapping! Yay! :)

moving on and other things

I used to blog on MySpace. But it's really become...boring. It serves no purpose anymore. So I deleted it. I used to blog quite a bit actually, and I want to try to get back into it. I just ran out of things to say, I guess.

That's not true. I think I'll probably always have something to say. I just need to start saying it, whatever it may be.

Beware. This particular entry will be very random and will encompass a variety of topics.

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I'm currently writing a play. We did an improv skit in Acting and Directing where we had to pick a character and then all of us were stuck in an elevator together and we had to get out. I'm basing it off of our characters. It's going to be amazing. I'm really excited for it.

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Lately I've been feeling really disconnected from everyone at Concordia. I think it's partly because I've been busy with school, and partly because I'm living off campus now. But also I just don't feel as close to people there as I used to. I think I'm ready to graduate, move on with my life, chose a graduate school and finally live in the same city as my boyfriend. I'm starting to get really impatient, and I'm losing interest in my "friends" at Concordia. I say "friends" because I don't know if I would consider them all my friends anymore. I don't really talk to them, I don't really see them, and I don't really have any interest in hanging out with them (with the exception of a few people). Now they seem more like colleagues than friends, people I go to class with. And the thing is, I don't feel bad about any of this. I don't feel guilty for not wanting to hang out with the people I used to. It's not that I dislike them now. People just move on. It happens all the time.