Another Survey

As I wrote in this post, apparently I am not depressed. One sign is that I rarely feel depressed when I am out and about, aka neither in my house nor my partner's.

In today's New York Times I found this article, which may be more to the point. It mentioned - yes, another survey! - this time the U.C.L.A. Loneliness Scale. The article also mentioned depression, because there is obviously a connection between the two. Lonely people get depressed and depressed people isolate. I never really thought of myself as lonely because I really do love living alone and I enjoy spending time alone.  I would more describe myself as "understimulated".  On the other hand I felt even more understimulated when I worked in an office sitting at a computer for hours at a time, dealing with metadata and metrics, in a post-Anita Hill environment where no one dared joke, flirt, or even compliment someone on a pretty outfit.  Quite frankly I would rather be home in my pajamas if I'm going to be doing something totally unstimulating.  At least I can look at my pretty things and sparkly red Christmas lights.

In the interests of full disclosure, my score on the Loneliness Scale was noticeably higher than on the Depression scale.  My score on the Depression Scale was extremely low whereas my score on the Loneliness Scale was one tick above the high end of normal, but not yet into the danger zone.

Jane Brody writes about lonely people overeating and indulging in other forms of self-destructive behavior.  I don't do that, but I do spend a lot of time online, reading Facebook posts from people with much more exciting lives, or pouring out my heart in these "pages".

Would I be less lonely if I didn't read posts from people who not only have exciting lives as singers and performers, but who obviously wish I would just go away.  They are either too nice (or too worried that meanness would tarnish their professional image) to take me off their friends list but they have either blocked me so they don't see my posts (this is a select group of people who have never responded to anything I have posted) and they rarely comment on any comments I make.  To be clear, there are some singers and voice teachers who are nice and who do comment on things I post, even things about singing, but these are in the minority.

When I started my new post-Valentine's Day life, I knew it was not just about singing.  It was about a lot of things, some of which I don't want to write about here (many of these have improved although mostly on the QT).  What I envied so about the Mentor wasn't that he sang (I am already a better singer than he was/is and I have a much more impressive natural instrument) but that he had managed to piece together a life that was about art (mostly another performing art form) and now teaches at a prestigious institution.  He did not have any money behind him, and actually as to whether or not he had mentors, I am not sure.  And I know other people like that.  People who have managed to find something to do for a living (even full time jobs with benefits) that entail doing something different every day and meeting lots of different people.

For whatever reason, that isn't feasible for me right now.  I spent a year at career counseling and it yielded nothing except the "low hanging fruit" of being able to do something at home on my own schedule (and the rock and hard place I am stuck between is that if I work more hours I am more depressed, lonely, and understimulated, but if I work fewer hours I won't be able to pay my bills, and there is only so much left in my mother's savings account to tide me over until I can collect my full retirement amount from Social Security in three years).  I had thought about taking my laptop to Starbucks (which would mean figuring out how to get it Wifi ready) but have decided that carrying an expensive and fragile - not to mention thief-attracting - item that contains my entire livelihood around unnecessarily would be extremely foolhardy.  But maybe I just think that was because I'm old.

Another rock and hard place situation is that I know that my involvement with my partner and her health and money problems (which by extension means that our shared financial means for enjoying ourselves outside the house, which if I'm with her always includes cab fares, is miniscule) is contributing to my loneliness and isolation.  On the other hand, if she died I would be heartsick (and lonelier, albeit in a different way) and I could never ever live with myself if I just dumped her.  She was the love of my life for almost four decades and still is, in many ways.

One problem is I get so little feedback, good, bad, or indifferent.  In a previous post I said that I thought I didn't have anything to offer, but I don't know if that is really true.  What I meant, more, is that I am not perceived as having anything to offer to these working singers with music degrees, even if the comments I post are about things I really might know as much about or more about than they do, like health issues, politics, or even the performances of great singers, many of which I saw before they were even born.

So there you have it.

In other news, I think I made a vocal breakthrough working on Werther yesterday, but I don't want to write about it until I see it it holds.  I have had so many false hopes to do with various technical tweaks to my upper register that work for a while and then don't.   And I ordered the score of Hamlet.