♪♫'Cause you're amazing, just the way you are♫♪

I'm not going to say I should try to write more consistently, because I've come to the realization that I'm just not a consistent blogger. I blog when there's something to say, or when I finally scrounge up the time to do so. Thus... it's been two months since my last post. Such is life, I guess.

The title for this post comes from the song Just the Way You Are  recorded by Bruno Mars... however, I am not too proud to admit that I only know it from the Glee version. So, thanks to Bruno Mars by way of the cast of Glee. 
This post is about music, or rather just artistic expression. Anyone who considers themselves to be an artist in any genre can probably relate. Then again, maybe not. I don't know how the rest of the population operates, I just know me. I am a musician, a singer, a dancer. I am fortunate enough to have found a career path that I absolutely LOVE, and I have found a job right out of college doing pretty much exactly what I was hoping to be doing.  But blessings sometimes have their price. My hours are awkward and sometimes inconsistent... I usually work 11:30-8, but with cuts to hours it's now closer to 11:30-7:30, sometimes it becomes 10:30-6:30, other days it's 11:00-7, sometimes even 12-8, and the rare occasions when I have normal day shift of 8:30-4:30.  I've been in dance most of my life, and my job doesn't really allow me to do that anymore as the classes tend to be weeknights before 8pm. The church choir I used to do rehearses Wednesday nights @7. The community chorale I was in for a while rehearses Thursdays @7. Add to that a recent decision I made to take a leave from the Sunday evening service I have been actively engaged in for 7 years, and I don't have a lot going on that is for me anymore.  Like I said earlier, I'm lucky. I'm a musician who gets to do music every single day. I sing every day. I play the guitar and the piano every day. I'm a music therapist, and I use music therapeutically every day. But I use the music I have to use to impact the lives of my patients.

Two weeks ago I went to the concert of the chorale that I desperately wanted to be in this semester. They were doing music by my favorite local composer. The concert was amazing. It was emotional and beautiful. It was a requiem that left me feeling sad and hopeful at the same time. I couldn't help but feel like the requiem was impacting me in the sense of feeling like all avenues of my own artistic expression have been closed off to me; have died. Then this past weekend I attended the senior voice recitals of two cohorts of mine from my first alma mater. They both sang beautifully and I very much enjoyed their performances. But again, I sat through it while experiencing this nagging feeling, that I should really be doing something with my own voice still.  I did not have the best college music experience in the world. I survived my lessons with a teacher that I didn't seem to work very well with at the time. I wanted to and almost did quit a few times. I hadn't done lessons much before, and I didn't really know how to control my voice, and how to work with it. I'd been told by almost all of my HS music teachers that I'd never make it, that I didn't have the ability to do anything in music. By the end of my senior year in college I had also undergone a personal attack from the campus ministry team about my song leading and my seemingly lacking connection to the music. Needless to say, I didn't have a whole lot of confidence in myself or in my abilities as a singer. I couldn't get past all the voices telling me I couldn't do it, and every time I sang I found the negatives, the mistakes, and the parts where I approached something badly, or wasn't supporting properly, or was even the slightest bit off pitch. In the semester of my senior recital I lost my voice for over 4 weeks. My recital hearing had to be postponed until only a week and a half before my recital. The hearing went poorly because I still couldn't vocally get through all of my pieces on my broken and struggling voice. I passed my recital. I made it through all of my songs. I survived, but it wasn't the great experience it should have been. After I graduated I continued taking lessons from my college voice teacher, and we talked out some of our issues with each other and found a really great balance with working together. I started to appreciate and understand more of what she was trying to get me to do, and she stopped telling me I wasn't trying and was obviously didn't care.

Fast forward to the present. It's been 3 years now since that graduation recital. 2 years since I've had any voice lessons. 1 year since I've done any difficult vocal repertoire in a choir. Last week I sat down at my keyboard and pulled out my recital repertoire. I warmed myself up and sang through the whole program. I was surprised at the sound I had after so much time away. It fell into place very easily, I remembered most of the songs. There have been several moments in the past year when I've been singing at church, rehearsing the psalm and I've started to sing and had to pause because, "is that really MY voice?" I don't know if my voice is changing (female voices tend to continue maturing well into their 30s), or if perhaps just my perspective is changing, and I'm finally allowing myself to really HEAR my own sound as opposed to the sound of my inner critics. Maybe it's because those people who told me I couldn't do it, are now and will forever be wrong. I did it. I'm doing it. I made it in spite of all of them and their lack of constructive feedback. Maybe it's because there's no pressure anymore. Whatever the case, I'm learning to like my sound for the first time in a long time. I'm learning that mistakes aren't the end of the world as long as you can recover from them and keep going. I'm growing in my confidence musically and just in general personally. But these last few weeks have really made me yearn for that artistic piece. I do music every day. There is a difference though in really working and exploring your voice, and in impersonating Elvis, Doris Day, and Johnny Cash. I get to sing every day, but my vocal range when I sing every day barely spans an octave and it's in the lowest register of my voice because that's where my patients need it to be to participate. I am really longing to explore this sound I have now, and see what I can do with it, and really just lose myself in some beautifully difficult repertoire again.

So I started thinking... I need to get back into lessons. I thought about finding a teacher in town here, and realized that the place I'd have to start were those HS teachers who told me I sucked 8 years ago when I was impressionable and needed support. Not an ideal. I've fallen out of touch with the teacher I worked with on audition materials for college and she lives a distance away now anyway. Then I decided I really wanted to be doing the caliber of music I should have been able to do my senior year if my voice would have allowed me to do it and I emailed my college voice professor. She agreed to work with me to find a lesson time that will fit into my awkward schedule, if I'm willing to be flexible. I'm hoping that this will prove to be a good experience. I'm going into it with a maturity and an understanding that I didn't have when I was an undergrad. I'm going into it with a new found confidence in myself and in my musical abilities. I'm going into it with the sole purpose of artistic expression and growth and no outside pressures. I jumping in realizing that there will be imperfections and mistakes and that's okay because I don't need to be perfect, I just need to be IN it. I'm ready to open myself up and just allow myself to be a part of the music, leaving behind the inner critic and just embracing the art of music. I'm really looking forward to doing lessons this summer. I am hopeful that it will be a wonderful experience for me, and one that may just allow me to keep my sanity by providing a much needed artistic outlet.

So the title. This song came up when I was shuffling songs on my iPod on my way home tonight. I stopped and thought to myself, you know what, I am amazing, just the way I am. I am at peace with myself and my abilities in the context of music really for the first time. I know I'm taking the title line somewhat out of context, but, it's just a really great feeling to be able to say that: I am amazing just the way I am.