Week 4, Day 1 — When Things Go Right

Today I'm starting Week 4 by finishing off Week 3.  Yesterday was an epic day in which I spent 10 straight hours at Glasgow Royal Concert Hall with a tech, soundcheck, rehearsal and full gala concert all in one day.   It was a brilliant experience.  I enjoyed singing to such a huge audience with a talented line up of performers, plus of course the wonderful sound of a 50-piece orchestra as accompaniment.  I felt elated as I sailed through my role as Valjean in the Les Misérables section, the grand finale of the evening.  Singing brings me so much joy — I found myself questioning, "Why did I think I could ever give this up" at the end of the night.  The answer, of course, is that I can't, and I never will.  Regardless of how far down the line I make it with my writing career, or even if I find myself in an every-day humdrum job for the rest of my life, I will always find opportunities to sing.  As I become more aware of my artistic self, I realise that I have a responsibility to find the right outlets to express myself artistically while properly supporting myself, and hope that I can strike a happy balance of all these things that will help me fulfil my potential.  I still think I've only scratched the surface of my talent and have so much more to give.

Week 3 is about recovering a sense of power, and going through all the emotions that it expects to drag up.  Now that I've gone back and completed the tasks I purposefully skipped when feeling fragile at the beginning of the week, I can see that I certainly covered the full spectrum it predicted.  I spent some time analysing myself this morning using the Dealing With Criticism pointers:  this task was much easier to complete fresh from a night like last night which was filled with positive feedback and compliments compared to when I tried it a week ago while feeling like utter crap!!  So I guess it's about perspective.  It's about finding a way to channel those feelings during the periods when things are scary and unknown and unpredictable, about reminding myself that yes, things do go well when I work hard.  And regardless of my faults, no one can deny that I try, and try again, then work triply as hard to do my best.

By the end of Week 3 we're expected to have recovered a sense of power.  I do feel stronger and more capable today.  I doubt I would have come so far in a week had I not had the opportunity to throw myself out there in such a hugely challenging way and come out the other end feeling euphoric.  A big chunk of this journey therefore has to be about practical application, about actually doing and experiencing, and not just reading and thinking my way forward.  The more I do, the more capable and powerful I will become.

I've been told in the past that I need to move out of my head space and live in the real world, come back to the present and stop dreaming about what things might be like in the future.  Today I appreciate exactly what that means.

There's a lesson in there.

K