What do I really want to do?

What do I really want to do? 

I don’t know. I’ve never really known. If you had asked me, when I was a little kid, what I wanted to be when I grew up, I would not have had an answer for you. I suppose if you had really pressed me on it, I may’ve said something like a policeman, a fireman, or astronaut. Not that I actually wanted to be any of those things, but those were the answers I had heard to that question. I can’t really remember anyone asking me that as a kid. They must have, right? That’s what adults ask kids.  Anyway... 

Later, as a teen, I didn’t have any strong feeling about a career. At some point, I thought maybe I could be a therapist. That may have been when I was in therapy. But, again, it wasn’t like a burning desire within me. I was writing music by that point, and I guess I liked it, so I started college as a music composition major. But even then, I don’t think I saw that as what I really wanted to be. It was just something that I did. I ended up switching to psychology, as I thought it was something I could maybe stand to do, but I continued studying composition as well. 

I never had a plan. Literally no one ever asked me what was my career plan. I never even heard terms like “5-year plan” or “10-year plan” until later when I was working at some schools. It really seems like someone, a teacher or an advisor sometime during high school or college, should have asked me that. Should have asked me what I wanted to do with my life. But I don’t remember that ever happening. And I’m pretty sure my parents never asked. Maybe I seemed like one of those students who did well, so everyone just assumed I had my act together in terms of a career path. But obviously I didn’t. 

There was some point, I think maybe my fourth year in college, when I was aware that I didn’t really know what I was doing, and I thought I might actually quit school for a bit and try to figure things out. But the few people that I talked to about that told me it was a bad idea and that I should finish a degree in something, anything, whatever I was the closest to finishing at that point. So, I stuck around another year (+) and got a degree in psychology, with a gigantic minor in music. I had more music hours than psych hours, but undergrad psychology is a pretty easy degree, and undergrad music is not. (Sometimes, when people find out I have a psychology degree, they’ll ask if I ever use it. And I’ll say, “Sure! I work with crazy people all the time - singers, dancers, actors.”) 

I ended up playing music for a living. It wasn’t really a choice I made because that was what I wanted to be. It’s just something that started when I was in college. My composition teacher told me, “Go play in jazz band, it’ll be good for you. Go play for dance classes, it’ll be good for you. Go accompany the opera, it’ll be good for you.” He meant those things would be good for me as a composer, and they definitely were. But I also discovered I could play music and people would pay me money for it. And that was nice, so that’s what I did. It just sort of happened. And accompanying led to doing musical theater, and that led to being an assistant music director and then music director. Once again, I don’t think it that was something I decided I wanted to be, it just sort of happened. 

So, I’m a freelance musician, and it’s hard to make a decent living at that. Especially if you don't feel a really strong drive to keep working at it because it’s really what you love doing. I still write music – sometimes classical stuff, sometimes theatre. I’ve never seen a way to really make money at that unless I were writing pop music for famous pop stars or big budget film scores, and I’m not actually interested in writing either of those kinds of things. About 10 or 12 years ago I started taking pictures. I like doing that, and I wish I could do it more. But even though every now and then people have paid me for photos, I don't see a way to regularly make money at it, at least not with the sort of pictures that I take and want to take. Anyway, I don’t know if that’s what I “want to be.” 

Now, I’m approaching old age. I turned 50 a few years ago and I have no money, no savings, not much of anything. I’m really just scraping by. It’s not like I spend money unwisely. It’s that I don’t really have money to spend in the first place. I’m not starving, or unable to pay the bills. But I don’t have a safety net nor a retirement plan. Several times in the past 15 or so years I have thought about maybe trying to find a “normal” job – a non-music job. But I’m not even sure what jobs there are out in the world. And, while there are some skills I have developed as a musician and music director, I’m not sure how they would translate to the normal job market. I’ve never been any good at convincing people to do things for me, so how do I convince someone to hire me with no background in a normal work environment? 

If you were to ask me now, what is it that I really want to do? 

Nothing? I don’t know. I’ve never really known. 

that school I worked at that one time

This morning I saw a facebook friend’s post about a former facebook friend getting a “prestigious” job at a private Christian college. I refrained from commenting on the post. The post was all about “congratulations to my friend, blah, blah,” and the comment that came to my mind was, “I worked there. Could not stand it. So fake. Left after one semester.” 

I didn’t post that comment. But it’s on my mind. (Apparently, I have too much free time to just have a thought then let it go.) So I’m writing about it here. 

I worked there. Could not stand it. So fake. Left after one semester. I told them half-way through the semester that I wouldn’t be staying. I worked as an accompanist in the music and theatre programs. I took the job because I had nothing lined up after a New Hampshire summer stock season which left me with not enough money to go back to NYC. Someone I knew at college posted on the facebook that the school where he was now teaching voice needed an accompanist. So I wrote him, and the school hired me on his recommendation. 

All I knew was that it was a private college – actually, it had recently become a university – that had some connection to a church. I had in the past worked at a private college that had some relationship with the Methodist Church. At that “Methodist” school, there were probably a lot higher percentage of religious students than you’d find at a state school. But it wasn’t an extremely religious atmosphere. So, I thought I had an idea of what I was getting into at this other school. 

This other school – I’ll go ahead and name it: the University of Mobile. It’s not actually in Mobile, but no one’s going to attend the “University of Saraland.” 

The Univeristy of Mobile is not a seminary, nor a bible college. When I was there, they described it to me as “a liberal arts school with a Christian perspective.” Now (I saw this on the link my facebook friend posted this morning), the school describes itself as “a Christ-centered liberal arts and sciences institution.” They are affiliated with the Baptist Church. I don’t think you have to be a Baptist to go there or work there. I wasn’t. I’m not (and have never been) a Christian. Now, if I had been teaching there and not just an accompanist, I would have had to make a profession of faith, because they would have considered me responsible for the students’ moral upbringing. 

The atmosphere there was not what I expected, not like the other school where I had worked. It was very religious and kind of disturbing. The students also had to make a profession of faith. This was a school where they would (maybe still do?) kick you out if you’re discovered to be engaging in homosexual activity. That is, unless they think you’re a significant addition to the program – you’re a really great singer or whatever – that they want to keep you there, so instead of kicking you out, they a big prayer session over you. 

It was so very fake. A lot of public praying – prayers generously peppered with the right church-y catch phrases, to let everybody who hears you know that you’re the right kind of person (or maybe the right kind of Christian?). It was like they were so “Christ-focused” that they couldn’t see how mediocre they were making their performances. When I say “Christ-focused” what I really mean is that they were busy trying to make everything they did nice and pretty and not possibly offensive or challenging to anyone because Conservative-American-Jesus wouldn’t want that. But that is not what art is about. It’s not what a higher education is about. 

And it wasn’t just about the music. There was a woman (an administrative assistant) who’s job it was at one big multiple group concert to check that all the young women’s dresses looked right – the right length or style of whatever. I don’t think any of the female students in that performance wore anything other than a dress. (Because that wouldn’t look right.) The appearance of righteousness and right-ness was obviously more important than the substance of things. I was told twice by the head of the department that I shouldn’t (or couldn’t – he had a slippery way of getting people to agree to things without sounding like he was outright telling you what to do. It took me a couple of conversations with him to realize it. I think of him as a snake-oil salesman.) talk about certain things – like the fact that I wasn’t a Christian – because “we don’t want to confuse the students.” 

Here’s the thing, though... At that level of education – a “liberal arts” university – maybe you DO want to confuse the students a little. You want to present complex ideas and encourage them to think and perhaps learn to deal with conflicting information, information that may not fit conveniently into your previous understanding. In my resignation letter to the department head, I said something that I hoped he would understand: as you mature, a time comes to “put away childish things.” (That’s from the Bible.) He liked to say that they were “training the next generation of lay leaders in the church.” I told him that if he wanted the church to do something other than shrivel away, those future leaders needed to learn how to deal with complex and uncomfortable realities. Things like the fact that I might be good at my job and have something worthwhile to contribute without sharing their belief system. 

This was 8 years ago. It hadn’t occurred to me then that “the church’s” future could be in more prejudice and fear and ignorance. I don’t know if that’s what happening in “the church” today. But that’s what seems to be happening with conservative America today. I have no current involvement with churches or church-affiliated groups. I’ve had it. I grew up going to church. We had to – my parents were the ministers. I’ve seen too much hypocrisy and bullshit. I’ve met too many people who say “I know what I believe,” yet know little or nothing about their church’s history or doctrine. People who are religious, but can’t hold a real conversation about religion because they’re just plain ignorant about it. 

I admit my intolerance of religion. Whenever I see people’s facebook posts of Bible verses or about how great God is and how He provides, or when I see people praying off to the side – or right there in front – before a performance or something, instead of going into your room and locking the door to pray privately (that’s in the Bible), I cringe. I retreat. I recognize that those people are probably not my people, even if they have other appealing qualities, like a sense of humor, or being a great performer, or being really intelligent. (And that one is the heart-breaker: really intelligent, educated, moderate-to-liberal people of faith, who never apply that intellect to their belief, unless it’s as an apologist. I just don’t get it.) 

I understand that for some people religion or faith or “spirituality” is a balm. I understand that we humans evolved with spiritual questions (about the nature of existence and out part in the scheme of things) much the same way that we evolved with language and story-telling, with tool use, with group identification. And all those things are still part of what makes us human. So, while I can’t reasonably expect humanity to entirely give up religion, or the need to seek answers to those kinds of questions, I (and we all) can and should hope that humanity lets certain things fall away when they’re no longer serving a beneficial purpose. Fall away, like the leaves that are falling off the trees right now outside my window. Those leaves will be replaced eventually. And I hope that hypocritical, fear-and-ignorance-based religions will be replaced by something useful. 

Oh! To put a nice, little, bring-it-all-back-to-my-original-starting-point bow on it... I didn’t make that comment on my facebook friend’s post, because this rant of mine has run to well over 1000 words, and who wants that on their facebook?