Motivation

I'm electing not to choose the title of this post before I write it. This is important for you to know so that you are forewarned--my intention is to talk about motivation in what is essentially a freelance career and possibly the explanation for my perpetual writer's block, but if I don't write in a title who knows what will actually happen?

That's kind of exciting.

I am happy to say that I have a paying singing gig lined up for every month of 2010 up through June. Between gigs and my apprenticeship, I've been keeping busy learning four full roles and an oratorio. Happily, in a huge change from last year's dearth of reaction to me during audition season, this year I've been offered 2 contracts (not enough money to be able to accept them, but they were offered) and 4 alternates (always the bridesmaid, never the bride.)

I cannot even begin to say what a difference this makes from last year around this time when I believed that I had nothing to offer as a singer and that I was on the cusp of a lifetime of failure. I am so thankful for last year. It taught me what it was to truly doubt, and then it taught me how to use all my resources. Fully five different programs wanted me in some capacity for their summer season (1 contract and 1 alt position were for the same program)--for a soprano to be in consistent demand means I must have been doing something right. Hitting bottom last year truly taught me to open up and search honestly for ways to improve, and obviously it worked. None of my usual means bearing any fruit meant I had to try new things, and thank God for that.

I tried new things, I filled up my spring calendar, and now... What the hell do I do for the rest of my year? The tiny companies I've been working for don't have their next season contracted yet, the bigger companies I want to move up to have already filled theirs. I'm terrified of an end of the year that looks like last year. Yet this time I know that I have control. If I don't get outside paying gigs, I now know that I can program my own concerts. I can determine my own fate.

However, I have to actually put the work in first.

I programmed a series of concerts in January. They were (by my standards) extremely successful. I turned a huge profit considering the money spent, everyone involved got paid, I learned rep I'd always wanted to. I now have these musicians on call for other concerts involving the same program--next time we perform this music it will involve even less time and effort, which means more profit, which everybody likes! Now that I've done this once, I can easily do this again... theoretically.

This brings me to the crux of what has always been my problem, and what I think is a problem for just about every single singer coming out of academia: how does one keep their motivation when their artistic time suddenly becomes completely unstructured?

It's amazing how much we completely hamstring our conservatory students. Thank god I'm relatively bright and had a fantastic class my last year called "Business of Music"--these two things gave me places to start. But to take a person who has been in the business of academics for 22 solid years and then spill them out into the real world outside of the externally imposed structure of a YAP? It's a recipe for disaster. At least I've answered the question of "what to do now" for myself, but there still exists the question of "how".

I'm trying to counteract my own inertia by swearing off my usual day job--waitressing--and using financial terror as an incentive to finally start my own voice studio and to program concerts for April and through the summer. But I'm living in a new place right now and I feel like all I do is research--what churches host concerts? Where can I get studio space? What is the structure of a private non-classical voice lesson? Where are the local, YA level concert series? For that matter, what local YA-level opera companies are hiring?

(Tangent for another time: that is the operative word, "hiring". This voice cost $70,000 to train and sounds pretty darn awesome. You don't get to listen to it for free anymore. My best friend and I were discussing this in terms of dating, but it's equally applicable to being a young singer--I am not a beggar for anyone. I may not be the best yet, but I am worthy, and you will treat me that way.)

How do I get to the point where I'm actually scheduling things?

On some level, I know that this is the way that I usually write amazing research papers. I read a billion books, I research thousands of sources, I write three outlines and random snippets of meaninglessness, I walk away from it for a few days and forget I have to do it, then the day before it's due I churn out some incredible 10-page monument to music in a matter of hours. This is the reading and researching part. I'm still figuring out the Philly scene, and most of the people I know are fellow apprentices with Center City who either already have externally imposed order (other training programs) or aren't really self-starters, so I don't have a lot of real connections yet. However, I drank coffee all afternoon and sat over my laptop reading up on how to start my own voice studio, but didn't actually stop by the place that offered me studio space to confirm with them.

I just wish I knew how to navigate my own mind, sometimes. I feel like it's a recalcitrant child that I have to bribe to do what I want, but I don't know what the appropriate candy is. Coffee sometimes works, but not lately. I occassionally wonder about whether I might have a touch of ADD, but my friend has a bad case of it and I did some research on it with her. If I do have it, it's borderline, and, frankly, perhaps I'm scared that if I do go see a psychiatrist about it, it'll turn out that I'm just lazy.

This is where I hand the topic off to the smartest of all answer-makers--the internet! How do you get yourselves motivated? Better yet, how do you stay motivated? How do you continue to make consistent progress?

Let me know in the comments. There are so many of us who need to be self-motivated right now--how do you make it happen?