Giving Myself More Credit
I would say I'm no stranger to doing things the "hard" way. The career I choose to pursue, my diet and exercise, my work ethic, my strict scheduling and organization of every aspect of my life... All of these decisions have shown me the value of putting in the hard work to get it right, and normally I benefit immensely from the choices I make.
For example, most people don't choose a career in the arts, there's no money in that right? Oh, let me tell you, there's plenty of money involved! Except all of it is through your own pocket! The amount of debt from school I've managed to rack up is incredible, and based on the success rate of most young composers, common sense tells me I'll be paying it off for the rest of my life. Yet I chose to chase after this crazy dream, why? Because in this insanely violent and terrible world we live in, music is the one thing that I can do to bring myself (and others) some peace and beauty. Breathing life into my creativity is one of the few things that will always make me happy no matter how vulnerable and how over-exhausted I may be. The music always comes through for me in the end.
And look how far I have already come!
Just this morning I was sitting in traffic thinking to myself all that I had accomplished these last few months. Frankly, I've been very disappointed in myself lately because there are a million things I should have done or should have started and I haven't done any of them. But taking the time to sit and realize that I won a second merit award for my original music for theater, I made my most daring music video (entirely by myself), learned a new job and have so far excelled at it, wrote one of my favorite songs I've ever had the pleasure to work on, and scored a film this summer, I have to just step back and give myself a little more credit.
Throughout this little pep talk with myself, I was listening to Seattle's Classical KING FM station to try an distract myself from the horrible traffic, and one of my favorite pieces was playing. It was Ravel's Daphnis et Chloé Suite No. 2, and between the tears of joy I shed just hearing the orchestra perform this genius work, I reminded myself that I'm working as hard as I can to achieve my dreams and that as long as I keep pushing and keep working, that can be enough.
So how am I spending today you may ask? Well it happens to be my day off so I've made a to-do list outlining the chores and projects I'll be working on (rotating laundry between editing videos and dusting surfaces and sending documents to school), then I'll do my interval training at noon where a trainer will literally work me to the point of tears (that's the goal anyway) and then I'll head to my parents house so I can spend the evening with them before they both go out of town. The tonight I'll return and work a bit on my senior recital. Oh, and I can't forget to post this blog. Then back to work tomorrow.
"What kind of day off is that?..." -you may ask.... Well I don't get days off.
I've got dreams to chase.
