A Need to Change the Narrative

Or move the needle, as people are always saying.

I am trying to make a happy life for myself by putting as much creativity in it as I have time for, and being grateful for the rest.

I don't consider taking care of my partner a burden; it's not just that I love her, I also find many of the people-rich activities I am involved in as her caregiver to be stimulating.  I love most of the aides who take care of her. They have opened my eyes and heart to a whole world that is very different from the one I grew up in and still live in, and which always leaves me feeling that I don't measure up.

A team of nurses came to see my partner.  We are now enrolled in a program that originated when she was in the hospital the last time.  It is geared toward people over 75 who end up in the hospital via an emergency room.  They suggested that I buy her a coloring book.  Now they are trying to get her a "buddy" (which would be a graduate student) from the Alzheimers Association.

I have one mini concert on the horizon and am doing some other networking.  My far off future plan, if my loved one dies and I am still healthy, is to sing for seniors not just by giving concerts but also by volunteering at nursing homes where I could come sing at their bedsides (or talk with them, listen to their stories, read, or anything else).

I am not going to try to get any kind of advanced degree.  I hate academics.  I can do this as a volunteer and continue to spend 20 hours a week copy editing.  It is boring and isolating, but it is what I need  mostly because I can make my own schedule and I know how to find work.  It is a very low maintenance kind of livelihood.  And (God works in mysterious ways) I now am working on a journal about aging.

Here's the problem:  I am distracted by bright shiny objects.

Almost every new person I meet is a real performer of some kind.  Is or was.  Is enough to have a web site and a list of credits going back to high school.  Gorgeous professional head shots. A place to be seen. For example, if I tick off the 20 or so people in my choir, more than half of them have music or theater degrees and more than half of them have advanced professional degrees from prestigious schools.  Many people have both.  Someone new joined the choir (she is very nice, and not someone I would be competing with because she is a musical theater style belter) who has a flashy web site and a public presence. (Right now she has taken a "break" from regional theater to work in tech, and who knows? She might stay there.) But her web site is what I mean by a bright shiny object.  Not the site so much as the fact that someone I met in a church choir has one. I want one too.  I suppose I could make myself one, but what for? I have this blog, and a Youtube channel, but I am not part of the conversation.  People will tell me "oh, you sounded lovely" but I am still at the bottom of the food chain.  The people in my Pilates class are all retired academics, or something similar.  One was a casting agent, one was (is?) an architect.

I can be having a happy day and then something coming out of the tsunami of uber-successful people I am drowning in will act as a trigger and I will dissolve into self deprecation because I am not a "bright shiny object" the way they are.  Someone told me (I suppose a propos of all the talk about Stormy Daniels) that with my large frontage (real), my age (a niche market) and my expertise with hair, makeup, wigs, and even masks, I could have a web site full of "adult" photographic content.  Is this the best I can do?? No thank you.  Prudery aside, that's an overcrowded market, too.  Is there anything that isn't?

If I can't have bright shiny objects (or be one) why can't I change the narrative? I can lose myself and be happy in small things (although nothing - except snuggling with my frail, sweet, partner - makes me as happy as getting up in front of an audience, singing well, and hearing applause) so why can't I stay there?

ETA: As always a glutton for punishment, I went back and googled "choir girl" to see what else I could find (a Facebook page? see who her friends are?) and found an article from last year's TIMES about her and her roommate (an aspiring opera singer) not about them as performers but about their travails with a North Manhattan apartment (I don't want to link to the article here for the sake of people's privacy).  There was a gorgeous photo, and quite a lot about these two young women.  So how did they nail a piece of publicity like that? That's what I'm dying to know.  Are aspiring performers better at networking with journalists so that they can promote themselves in every way possible? I know a lot of people have various apartment travails and they don't have huge pictures of themselves in the paper. This just confirms my whine that I just don't know the right people.