Am I Lazy?

I still have not been able to shake off this funk. In my last post I referred to myself as "lazy". Now, ok, in most ways I'm not. I practice every day except Saturday (usually my eldercare day). If it's a choir day all I do is a quick warmup (and if it's a voice lesson day I don't do anything because I will have my warmup there) but other days I sing for at least an hour, sometimes two. I follow the choir director's example and always work on three pieces of music (he always has us run through three things, usually what we will be singing the three successive Sundays).

Yes, I seem to have a huge resistance to picking up the solfege book. I think it's boring. And does it really matter if I know where "do" is in a piece I'm singing if I can sing it? In the scheme of things this doesn't seem to be a high priority.

But really, when I talk about being lazy I mean something else. I mean that when I find a situation that is "comfortable", even if it's not ideal, I will stick to it like glue.

That is what my mother's generation did. I spoke with her about this once and she said that being a young adult during the Depression was hard, and there were so many pitfalls, that if you found a secure job, a decent spouse, and a livable apartment or house, you just stayed there. You didn't think, "gee, I wonder if there's something more fulfilling out there". "Settling" was part of being an adult. You made the best of what you had.

I seem to be more like that than most people of my generation. In over 60 years I have lived in one city, and for my adult life (meaning after I got sober) I have lived in three apartments, worked for three companies, and had one relationship (meaning one relationship...friends with benefits when you're caring for someone ill don't count here).

I think part of my laziness about looking for paying church gigs is, aside from the fact that I already have a source of income, that I am afraid to venture forth. This unpaid choir gig is a known quantity (although I don't think I've ever felt "dissed" to the extent that I did regarding that Good Friday service) and I now have a nice circle of friends my own age there.

The other thing that made me realize I am lazy is that finally for the first time, a man who produces concerts included me on a group email saying he needed a singer. If it hadn't been this Saturday way out in Brooklyn of course I would have jumped at the chance. But Saturday is my eldercare day and I don't feel safe traveling to and from the outer Boroughs at night, so I didn't respond. Will he ask me again? If he does and it seems manageable I will certainly do it. In general I do better with audiences - even at auditions - than I do in front of groups of my peers, as in those Meetups.

Sometimes I just feel the odds are so insurmountable. Not just the technical work I have to do, but that I am not really a musician (I do not have any audio for two of the possible solos I am working on - I checked YouTube - so learning them is very hard. I only really learn what I hear. If I have a recording of something I will be humming it after the third go-round. Here I have to plunk the piano part on the keyboard and sing with it and hope the sound of the intervals sticks in my head.

And the fact that I am answerable to another person's needs, someone who is old and frail, destitute, and now may be losing her eyesight. I can't leave her now. I can do what I want on my own time, but I can't go galivanting off here there and yonder.

So many things are going well for me, but they are boring things. They are grown up things that a person needs to have as an infrastructure, but they do not make me feel glamorous or exciting or interesting. I went to my accountant and was pleased to see how much I made this year in view of the fact that I only work 25-30 hours a week. And he said not to file for Social Security on my 62nd birthday (which is only 3 months away) but to wait until I'm 66. He said if I have a shortfall it's better to take money out of my mother's savings account.

Then I looked online for my credit report (something I have never done) and was pleased to see that it is clean as a whistle. This is something I need if, God forbid, I lose my rent controlled apartment as a result of the Supreme Court case and I want to put a downpayment on a condo or even rent something else.

But these things don't make me an artist in my eyes or anyone else's.

On the plus side: I spent two hours all told working on my three solo choices for this season (I still haven't heard back from the choir director but that doesn't mean anything - he is probably busy and not in his church office) and ran through the "Kyrie" from the Verdi Requiem with the recording, being pleasantly surprised that I was able to do it.

On the minus side: I looked at the flyer for the production of Gioconda that I auditioned for. I checked the bios of some of the women and they all have done so much.

I have done nothing really.