I Miss Church

I should clarify that I actually do attend church on a regular basis… at least, I did. I’m almost twenty-nine, still single, and I’ve lived in several places. I did eventually land back in my hometown at my home church. Several years ago I was an active member of it, even in leadership. I ran a children’s ministry (that was the year I decided I was not going to be an elementary school teacher), I was on the youth leadership team, and I was a regular pianist. It was actually a really great year, despite the fact I didn’t love the young children in my ministry. The rest of the youth leadership were my age, though almost all were married, and at the time they didn’t have kids yet. I actually had a pretty good-sized friend group, and I felt like I was contributing and making a difference in my church.

When I returned a few years after that (now two years ago) I walked into an entirely new situation. Most of my friends had kids by then, and several had moved away. Those that were left were in the middle of some sort of “situation”, where the new pastor at the church had basically allowed the ultra-conservatives (very aggressive ones) to take over the board and push anyone they disagreed with out of leadership. After six months of trying to work with them with the aid of the youth director (who was 21 and one of the youths I had once mentored as a youth leader) it was clear that the congregation saw no reason for our ministry to continue. I started looking for a new church soon after.

I had a friend that had left my home church years before, so I started going to her church. This congregation is considerably smaller than Homechurch. The first day I went, my friend and I took our time arriving and accidentally arrived only ten minutes before the sermon ended (because, apparently, this church didn’t run until 1!). There were around twenty people present, while Homechurch usually had between 200 and 250. This was also the height of the pandemic, and this church had a full chair or two of space between each party, and everyone was kindly asked to wear a mask at the door. They rent a smaller building from a larger church (since we’re Sabbath observers, the services don’t overlap) so everything they had had to be compact and portable. After the sermon ended, a man got up to lead the closing song. The song played on the portable projector screen karaoke-style, with the words shading in where the voice was meant to sing them. The singer often lagged behind the music, but the congregation seemed fine to sing on without him.

This was such a change from Homechurch. Since I’d returned (again, at the height of the pandemic) the place not only refused to distance chairs and parties during services, but anyone that did wear a mask was chastized or, at the very least, mean mugged. Homechurch had been so particular about their music that every good pianist and most of their praise teams had bailed or been asked to step down, and by the time I quit my own pianist rotation, there was only one pianist left. (She soon after went to Korea to teach English. I hear they often sing with tracks now.) Seeing the congregation not only content, but appreciative of anyone willing to help out was such a breath of fresh air!

The fact that I prefer “imperfect” music may shock some people, and it does when I tell them in person. People that know me (including you, if you’ve read my blog before) know that I am a professionally trained musician. I have a music performance degree and play several instruments, I’ve been in ensembles and taught them at high school level (and college level, if you’re counting my senior recital project), so it’s not like I don’t know how to make music presentable. However, I firmly believe that the second you turn away someone that’s willing to participate is the second that you chose pride over worship. This had been going on at Homechurch for years (and was one of the reasons my friend and her husband initially left), and I was so happy to be in a church that didn’t need things to be perfect.

That being said, it was clear they did need help–more in quantity than quality. They had two rotating praise leaders, but honestly four is a more ideal number so that you have a once-a-month rotation going on. The man that led out that first day I visited was also very crowd-shy, and confessed to us later that he would rather never be on stage again, though felt if he didn’t do it, no one would. The music coordinator, a woman that played guitar, moved with her family out of state a few months after I began regularly attending. My friend’s husband stepped up, and one of my friends who had hopped out of Homechurch with me began her own praise team that I joined. After a few months, however, she and her family also moved away.

That’s when I started to take up a more musically-related leadership role and really became involved. Newchurch, as I’ll call it, was one of my favorite places to be. I loved their pastor and the elders that spoke on the weeks he was absent, I felt I made a couple of new friends, and all of the politics that I always heard about at Homechurch were left behind. For the first time in years, I really felt like church was for fellowship and spiritual growth. Homechurch had talked about building a new sanctuary from the time my family moved when I was seven, and they never did build one. They also were contingent with the Christian school that I worked at, and there was always debate about the financial burden the school was on the congregation. At Newchurch, there was none of that. They had minimal ministries, hardly any prep, and there was no talk of politics or the pandemic, just a respectful understanding.

For about a year, I loved Newchurch and stayed heavily involved. There were some changes I didn’t love, of course. We got a new pastor, who’s preaching style is not my favorite and is clearly a little more conservative than the dynamic of the church. However, he’s more respectful and reasonable than the team at Homechurch. Around the time he arrived, some long-standing members at Homechurch decided they were done with the shenanigans over there and also started attending Newchurch.

It’s notable to say that these weren’t just casual members of Homechurch. Before the crazies took over, they had been in leadership for literally decades. They started looking for a new place to worship after Homechurch basically ignored some policies and kicked their remaining opposers out of their positions. I think their original plan had been to do some church-hopping, but, like me, stayed after one week.

After a month, I began to notice the changes.

Homechurch had a lengthy service–about two hours long, featuring several segments that the smaller church just can’t sustain– specifically, scripture reading, children’s story, and special musics every single week. The small church didn’t even do the lengthy offering explination, only had a general invite for offering at the end of service. But within a month of this couple coming to Newchurch, they were participating on the platform. Children’s story was added spontaneously one week–and some weeks we don’t have a single child in the congregation. Most weeks we have four to six kids, and we’ll randomly have ten or twelve, but it’s likely we won’t have enough for someone’s story prep to be worth it.

And suddenly, there was talk of a new sanctuary.

Sure, Newchurch was growing, but we definitely hadn’t (and still haven’t, in my opinion) outgrown our rental space. But within a couple of months, there was serious talk from the pastor and the “leadership” (but I knew it was coming from this couple) that we needed a new building ASAP, and the search was on.

This might have been an unnecessary trigger for me, but I was immediately put off. For twenty years all I’ve heard is how we have to build a church, build a church, build a church. That church was obsessed with building, and I often felt the leadership didn’t even know what the needs of the church even were. Not hearing about a “building project” was one of my favorite parts of Newchurch!

Somewhere in there, Homechurch decided they were no longer going to build this building. That’s when two more key couples showed up at Newchurch, and the building fund and search committe became more important– I guess because the people with the money were driving the project. I decided just to get over it. These people had won over the pastor, so the building stuff ended up in announcements and agendas, but I knew none of them were offical church leadership. It would just remain the remnants of Homechurch’s pet project until the rest of the congregation really grew and decided to invest in a new place.

It all really went south during church office elections this past spring.

My friend was serving as music coordinator and had been since the guitar lady left. He’s not perfect, but I thought he did a great job for what he had to work with. He and I both tried to start more consistant teams than just the two of us, but we weren’t successful more than a handful of times (I did have a praise team of teenage girls I was working with regularly). We fully expected them to reelect him, and he and I were already working on a plan to make things smoother this coming term.

Yet, I was the one that got the phone call, and I knew they didn’t call him first. It was the pastor that reached out on behalf of the committe, and I asked him if they’d spoken to my friend, and to please ask him first. Now, this whole “let’s ask someone else so we don’t have to ask the person in the position already” thing is a classic move of these people that had been in leadership at Homechurch, and one of those key members was on the nominating committee. Just to be clear, the actual right thing to do would’ve been to at least notify the incumbant that they were being asked to do something else. But the pastor told them, instead of what I’d actually said of “ask the other guy first” was that I had flat denied the position.

I was very upset about this–far more upset than my friend was about not being asked, I think. The Homechurch antics, though not the reason that I initially left, were now seeping their way into Newchurch–somewhere I had truly come to believe was my personal sanctuary. They ended up nominating another Homechurch newcomer–one that had passed on helping us with music in the past and had proven at Homechurch to be semi-reliable, at best. I figured he had only agreed because they’d told him that no one else would do it, and I went to speak with one of the elders that had been on the committee–someone who hadn’t once been at Homechurch.

I explained that actual conversation and how I felt I’d been put in a bad place, which was my initial reason for “denying” the position. I even showed her the text chain I had with the pastor, and she agreed to return to the committee. What happened after that isn’t completely known to me, but weeks later she told me the pastor was supposed to speak with me once again before the final vote, and he did not. So the new music coordintor (hereby referred to as NMC) was officially voted in. I was given some sort of undefined title to help him, but as it remained undefined and I am 100% sure the pastor never spoke to NMC about it, I consider it non-existant.

I decided to give the NMC the benefit of the doubt. I recieved several (somewhat cryptic) texts from him about joining a reguar team and practicing on Friday nights. However, two weeks in a row they had to cancel because Mrs. NMC caught COVID. The first week was my friend’s last week as music coordinator, and the second week some of my friends agreed to sing as long as I’d play piano for them.

And that week was the weekend following Roe V. Wade, so you know the sermon was on politics that I’m not willing to discuss (see my previous post for more on that). I would’ve been up in arms about the sermon, which later turned into three loosely-organized sermons on politics, but something new happened that added a layer to my disdain.

When I was taking down the keyboard, I noticed a man staring at me. I tried to brush it off as nothing weird at the time. Perhaps he was just distracted because I was the only person left on the stage. But a few minutes later I was chatting with a friend that happened to be visiting the church that day, and the man approached me. He introduced himself as a musician, and I thought he wanted to talk about joining a praise team, so I started a friendly conversation with him about it. We even exchanged numbers (again, under this pretense that I assumed he wanted to be on a praise team) but then it got weird when he asked if I had a husband, and then several more times if I was single. This man, by the way, is at least twenty years older than me, if not twice my age. I was very disturbed when, by the end of the conversation, he was asking me to dinner or a hang-out. I was too flustered to answer with anything reasonable, like “I’m really not interested in that”, so I parted with “we’ll see!”

Hopefully he got the hint, but I couldn’t be sure.

Back to music. Here’s the thing: I don’t love playing the piano for Newchurch. It’s a keyboard and the sustainudo pedal may or may not work. Piano also means twice the practice time for me. It’s what I’m least comfortable with. In the year and a half I was regularly participating, I played maybe three times. The rest of the time I played ukulele either by myself or with the girls, or I had background tracks from youtube while I sang. That being said, I’m not the only pianist in the church, but I’m the only one that can commit consistantly. I explain this to most people I play for, and everyone that compliments after, because the congregation does love it. But I don’t.

Well, when we finally got around to practicing. NMC had invited anyone and everyone he knew to be on this praise team, and declared that we were going to do music every week. Every. Single. Week. Now, Newchurch is almost half an hour drive for me, and these people don’t live any closer. I told him I couldn’t be driving that far twice a weekend every week. Everyone else also voiced their doubts that this was a sustainable plan. NMC brushed it off, though he did eventually say once “everyone” came back from vacation that we could have two solid groups going. But “everyone” they know are singers, not pianists or guitarists. NMC is a guitarist, but he doesn’t feel confident playing without some backup (and practicing with me was not great, so he decided not to play along with the piano).

The first week I played with them wasn’t awful. It sounded alright, though we had some technical difficulties. NMC seemed put-off with our humble set-up, and ranted about how we needed more equipment and space to store it, even though the church we rent from is very generous with our allowances, in my opinion. He did declare to donate everything we needed (NMC is a doctor, by the way). And then insisted that we would have everything we needed by the next week.

And after church I spent most of my energy watching for the creepy guy that had asked me out to make sure we didn’t cross paths. I even had a whole conversation with the pastor to avoid running into him in the parking lot.

The next week they scheduled a 9am practice in addition to our 6:30pm eve-before practice, but I didn’t find out until I was already at the first practice. They also asked the sound set-up to start at 8am so that we could have the full 45 minutes before lesson study to practice. (Remember, I live half an hour away). NMC and his family were on time, but all the equipment he was going to donate also showed up with them at 9 instead of at 8, so the sound people have to scramble to set it up while we were practicing. They also were very transparent about the fact that they weren’t miracle workers, and there was only so much they could do on the spot. However, NMC seemed to brush this off, as if saying “I believe in you!” is all it takes to make technology work. (Similarly, when I told them that I didn’t love playing keyboard, it was like they thought complimenting me on playing it would magically make me enjoy it more.) Both he and Mrs. NMC also stopped practice or interrupted it several times to micromanace the sound setup.

Now, remember, I have a professionally trained musician with extensive experience, and the sound people are definitely good at what they do. But I felt that any limitation we brought up was brushed aside and almost patronized by NMC. (At one point he asked the head sound guy if he knew what an HDMI cable was because he would bring more next week, and he was not amused.) At the end of the service, the NMC told me again that he really thinks we can kick off another rotation after “everyone” gets back from vacation, but keep in mind, I’m the only pianist.

This week was a little more difficult to dodge the creepy guy (what can I do, report him? It’s not a crime to ask out a grown woman) and though I was ultimately successful, I found that when I got to my car I had not a single ounce of joy since arriving that morning. My sanctuary had become the most dreaded part of my week– playing piano for people that thought my dislike of playing was due to lack of compliments, sermons I try not to cringe through, and dodging creepy older men that thought any young thing at church is destined to be his Godly wife.

I realized, shockingly and saddeningly, that I had no reason to be there.

Church people are always asking, “Why are the youth leaving the church?” I can’t speak for the youths, really, though I could write a whole other post on my theories for them– also how you shouldn’t be treating people past twenty-one as “youths” anyway. But for me, this is why. I felt Homechurch members came to Newchurch and immediately began to terriform it. Everyone on the platform that week had been at Homechurch a year before, and I realized that I was the only one not in Newchurch leadership. The woman that had prayer that morning also inserted scripture reading, NMC has since announced we are adding special music, both features of Homechurch that were added without discussion. Any faith I had in the leadership was pushed aside when I got that call that went behind the former music director’s back.

When I thought I was doing the right thing by “dying” the music coordinator position, I think I gave up any voice I had in the church. I thought I could still influence the music planning, but I think most of what I said was brushed aside, and I’m too discouraged to push it further. I know there are others that concerned with all the sudden changes, but I don’t know that we’ll be heard with all these people in leadership. I also don’t want to continue attending church to cringe at sermons and avoid creeps. It’s not a sanctuary for me. My spiritual life has little to do with attending church anymore. In fact, church makes me question it more than anything.

I notified the NMC that I won’t be at church this weekend. Right now I plan on just taking a week off to do some thinking. Maybe I’ll call someone in leadership and talk to them about it; but as it is, I don’t see a future for myself in church. If that doesn’t change, it will be my reason to leave.

An Insomniac’s Address

Originally written as the longest Instagram story in recorded history…

Some of you may know that I’m a life-long insomniac. Well, it’s 2am and I have thoughts instead of sleep. Anxiety instead of peace. Hurt instead of healing. It’s a whole thing. Not as poetic as I’m making it sound right now.

It’s true that politics aren’t the only thing keeping me up tonight. It’s been the worst year of my life and it’s not over. I’d say there’s light at the end of the tunnel, but the train seems to be stopped at a station. The progress feels paused at the moment. That’s probably just the 2am exhaustion talking. (Don’t worry if you dm me tonight, I’ll laugh it off and say, “I’m fine 😊”.(But really, I will be once I sleep at least a few hours, I promise.)  

Even before this year, I wasn’t much of an Instagram user. I have a few posts here and there, some highlights and whatnot, but I watch your stories, as you are watching mine. And some of you, I assume, are like me: you watch the stories and scroll the feed, but you hardly ever post. Some might call us “lurkers”.  I like keeping light tabs on people. Some are family, some are friends, and some are former students of mine.

But after tonight, some of you I will no longer keep tabs on. And some of you will be removed from my following.

I used to believe in constructive conversation. I used to believe that people could see two sides, and if not reach an agreement, at least a compromise. I’ve seen the graphic that says not to block out people you disagree with, because that’s how we stay united instead of divided. I used to believe that. But I don’t anymore. I will have to separate myself from these voices, at least on social media, and I will not be discussing these topics in person.

Topic A. The A-word. Abortion. It’s not a black and white topic. In fact, it’s quite complicated. I hope it doesn’t shock too many of you to hear that I’m politically pro-choice, although to be more specific, I am pro-doctor-patient-decision making in high-risk and/or non-viable pregnancies more than I am electively ending a pregnancy because someone made some mistakes. Fundamentally, I’d say I am pro-life. But the decision to ban abortion, full-stop, is not “saving babies”, it’s harming women. And if you really want to reply to this story and tell me that abortion is murder, I’m afraid I’ll have to decline to engage in that argument. You’re entitled to your opinion, but here’s mine:

20th-century Christianity has been built on legalism and fundamentalism, with only a handful in each congregation truly living the life that we were called to. The political fight against abortion in the US has been a massive byproduct of that, which keeps anything from getting passed on either side of Congress, inhibiting any real progress in our country. And here’s the thing about legalism and fundamentalism: it’s a lie.

The lie is this: “If we purify our culture, we will earn our way to heaven”.

This lie extends to many things: outlawing gay marriage, prohibiting trans rights, and, most popularly, banning abortion. Oh, and don’t forget to put prayer back in schools. But just for Christians, because how can we purify our culture if those pesky Muslims, Jews, and Buddhists (just to name a few) have the same rights to pray in school as Christians? How will we earn our way to heaven, as a country? As God’s chosen people?

Hopefully, you realized that I was being facetious just now. The truth is this: God never told us to earn our way into heaven. He never said, “purify your culture”. He said, “purify your heart.”

I’ll come back to this. Onto topic B. The B-word. Banning guns. Okay, fine, it’s a G-word. Guns.  

As previously stated, I am fundamentally pro-life. I am also a teacher. I’ve taught all the grades, all the ages. I’ve been in public and private school, in which both I’ve had to have conversations about how to proceed if a weapon is drawn in the building. I live in Texas, where it’s obviously a big piece of culture to have a collection of the things just hanging out in your garage. And sure, I support the second amendment. I should clarify that I don’t think guns are in and of themselves evil. But I’m over the “people kill people” argument when the data of every other developed country in the world says that having strict gun laws extinguishes mass shootings, especially assault rifles. Again, I will not be responding to your DMs about this issue, especially if you claim to be “pro-life”. You cannot be pro-rights and pro-life.

And I know some of you will say that I was pro-rights over pro-life with my abortion stance above, but I’ll remind you that I’m not here with the opinion that abortion is murder. We cannot play that game if we don’t start in the same field.

This brings me to C: my Chrsitianity.

First of all, thanks if you’ve stuck around this long and haven’t rolled my story on past. I saved this point for last because I don’t want anyone to think that I came to all these conclusions because I’ve gone “liberal” or something. Some of you are probably just shaking your head thinking that I’ve fallen for someone else’s lies. I’m blinded with naivety, and I’ve been fired up by feminist ideals and the left agenda. But the truth is that these aren’t opinions that I’ve conjured after scrolling through Instagram or Twitter.

Twelve years ago, a boy in my high school speech class took the pro-choice side in an abortion debate, and that’s when my search for answers began. Seven years ago, I became a teacher in a Christian school. Kids started asking me questions I knew I couldn’t answer. Not because I’d failed to learn apologetics, but because I already knew that at least some of the apologetics aren’t based on Biblical principles. They’re based on the idea that we need to purify our culture instead of our hearts (or even worse, that purifying our culture will purify our hearts). So, I knew the only way to answer their questions was to answer them for myself. I found that God was calling me to simply do what we’ve all been called to do: to purify my heart. Purifying our hearts individually (removing the log in our own eyes) is the only way to change the culture around us.

The greatest commandments are these: Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind. And love your neighbor as yourself. Jesus taught us how to love God. Loving God is loving “the least of these”. There is no love in forced, subjective morality. “Purifying” our culture will only poison our hearts and make us believe in the opposite of the gospel, that we can earn our way to heaven, missing the entire point of the gospel. Even worse, we have now alienated thousands of people with our “Christianity” and our hypocrisy: the idea that abortion is “murder” but banning assault rifles (not all guns) would be an infringement of rights when they have already taken thousands of children—not to mention teachers.

Oh, and then there’s the whole vaccine thing but we don’t need to bring that up again. You can probably guess how I feel about that.

I could really go on forever, but why, when anyone that disagrees has already scrolled past or stopped reading, and anyone left I don’t need to convince? But if you are here, and you did read the whole thing, thank you. After this, I don’t plan to spend any energy debating points or sending counter-arguments. I’m going to redirect my energy to continue rebuilding my life and finally see some more light at the end of the tunnel. (Really, I’m fine! 😀 )  

Maybe now that I’ve expressed these opinions and it’s now 3am, I will finally be able to sleep.  

Seven Brides: The DIY Wedding

Welcome back to Seven Brides: the series where I take you through all the weddings I’ve been involved in. In my last post I told the rather uneventful story of my older brother’s wedding in 2012. I was 19, wore a red, extremely impractical bridesmaid dress, had my hair done BAD, and the only good story that came out of it was a cake disaster…and it wasn’t that exciting.

This wedding, though, I’m still bitter about.

For the record, I don’t have anything against DIY Weddings. I’m sure if I ever get married I’ll have plenty of DIY elements. I’m bitter about this wedding specifically because I feel strongly if a wedding is going to be DIY, the couple better be the ones DIY-ing.

This was my cousin’s wedding, and the first not-sad family occasion since the deaths of my father and grandfather in late 2012 and early 2013, respectively. My older brother had been the first grandchild to get married–however, he’s not the oldest in the generation. In fact, my brothers and I are the tail end of the birth order. The three older cousins either weren’t dating or weren’t talking about it at the time, but I always felt my cousin (the groom of this story) had always been a bit girl crazy. Part of me has always believed that the sole reason he proposed to his girlfriend was because he saw my brother get married first, thought, “That looks good!” and went for it.

I didn’t really know the bride at all. I actually wasn’t supposed to be involved in the wedding at all. My older brother was going to be a groomsman (although since my cousin had been his best man, I think he was a little hurt he didn’t get the reciprocated position). The wedding was set for my brother’s first anniversary, the third Sunday in June. I don’t remember if this was done on purpose or not. If you think it sounds a bit tacky (as I kinda did), just know that both my brother and my cousin are the sort that think the more connections people have, the better. My brother even wanted to get married on his birthday because my parents got married on my dad’s, but it was on a less convenient day. (He probably would’ve also settled for my parents anniversary and Dad’s birthday if it was on a weekend, though Dad decidedly would not have allowed that). A few weeks before the wedding, one of the bridesmaids dropped out and the bride asked if my new SIL would be willing to step in–and thankfully, she was the same size and height as the dropout.

My lack of planned involvement didn’t mean I wasn’t invited to the festivities. The wedding was in the Texas Hill Country– a place that I found very special in my childhood. My aunt and uncle were probably the ones I was closest to at the time, and my mom and I stayed in their upstairs guest rooms while my brother and SIL stayed downstairs.

I also remember fondly that it was one of the first and only solo road trips that I accomplished using printed, map quest directions. Like the summer before, I was living in my college dorm and working in the office, south of Ft. Worth. My mom would be coming to the Hill Country from Houston, making our routes very triangular. I’d had my car for only a few weeks at this time– my trusty old 2002 Ford Focus (just so we’re clear, I’m being extremely liberal with my use of the word “trusty”). I’d never gone to that part of Texas on my own before, not to mention from school. It’s not exactly an open interstate the whole way. I was very proud of myself when I made it. I was even more excited to show off my car to anyone that cared…though in hindsight, nobody really did.

I believe I arrived in the afternoon, though I don’t remember if it was the day of the rehearsal or the day before. My aunt showed me some of the hand-made decorations that her step-daughter and step-son’s wife had made for the bouquets and other decorations, and then asked if we would be willing to come help set up the reception hall after the rehearsal. My mom and I agreed. It was no secret to my family that I was always up for some crafting.

We attended the rehearsal and the dinner. I didn’t know anybody in the wedding that I wasn’t related to, so I stuck pretty closely with my mom. As promised, we accompanied my aunt back to the rented hall space: the common room of a local senior community center. I remember the space struck me as very boring. They didn’t even have tables or chairs. Someone had to bring those over from the church. But we got to decorating. The theme of the wedding was “country chic” (ah, 2013…ahead of it’s time). My step-cousin put me to work immediately making long, burlap table-runners. I also hand-wrote several of the name tags for the personalized, wedding favor mason jars.

The groom and his friends stuck around to help do anything they could. The place had to be cleaned before we could set anything up, and then most of the furniture had to be cleared before they could bring in the tables and chairs. However, the bride and her family were nowhere to be found. The bridesmaids were also MIA. My aunt reached out to ask her where they were (because decorating the night before had been either the bride’s or her mother’s idea) and the mother said that they were spending time with family that came from out-of-town.

In my opinion, they should’ve done what my aunt did–bring the out-of-town wedding guests to help! This all was her vision, after all. I don’t know how much help they would’ve been anyway, because even with eight or ten people, we still had to quit around eleven and return in the morning.

Well, some of us returned in the morning. My aunt had a hair appointment and had paid for my mom to tag along (I guess because my mom didn’t learn from the previous summer’s mistakes, though her hair did not look memorably bad the way it does in the pics from 2012). It was her son’s wedding, after all. My step-cousin and her sister-in-law (my step-cousin-in-law?) were the ones that I met at the senior center that Sunday morning. The coordinator might have also been there early on. The wedding I believe was at two back at the church, but we were back to work by 9. A few people rotated in and out as the morning progressed. Occasionally a man would come and we’d have him move something. I seem to remember putting some burly guy to work on a floral arrangement. The live flowers were delivered and we started placing them in any arrangement we could find.

And here is where we have cake disaster #3.

As any DIY wedding, this one was on a budget. But if weddings have taught me anything, it’s to not skimp on your cake. They ordered a plain, multi-tiered wedding cake from H-E-B, the superior grocery store of Texas. They had a converted plant stand set up with the floral foam tiers underneath it where we carefully placed bunches of baby’s breath and other flowers. The cake was delivered around noon, and in the Texas heat, it was already in the 90s outside. The inside of the place was also heating up, my guess is somewhere in the high 70s, if not the 80s because of the size of the space and the amount of sunshine in the windows. Buttercream should have endured the heat for a few hours. Fondant would’ve been even better.

That’s when we discovered that this cake had been iced in whipped cream. And whipped cream melts.

We didn’t have access to enough fridge space to store the tiered cake. The most we could do was put fans on it, but then the baby’s breath was getting stuck in the icing. The still-melting cake was the last thing I laid eyes on before I had to leave. A church member was left to tend the cake as the three of us dashed to our respective homes to change for the wedding, less than an hour away.

They’d left the house unlocked for me, at least. But I didn’t have time to shower. I changed into the outfit I’d brought and put my hair in a clip. I smothered my face in badly-applied foundation and gave myself some eyeliner. I don’t think I even put on mascara before I ran back out the door to my car and headed back to the church.

If the ceremony hadn’t started late, I wouldn’t have made it until after the bride entered. I sat between my mom and my older cousins that had arrived with our other aunt from San Antonio. I saw that my step-cousins had each made it, but they also looked a bit disheveled.

I again don’t remember much about the ceremony (you’ll find it’s a real trend of mine) except for one part. During the rehearsal, the wedding coordinator gave a lecture to the father of the bride about lifting her veil and kissing her cheek before officially giving her away at the alter. She had him practice the veil thing three or four times. For whatever reason, the man could not get it together. The coordinator specifically told him, “If you remember nothing else, remember to kiss her on the cheek!” Well, here we were, ceremony day, and the dad mumbled his give-away and went to sit. Maybe he was overcome with emotion. Maybe he didn’t care. Either way, that’s what I remember.

I will say I remember more about the reception. It’s one of the few weddings I’ve attended with long, banquet-style guest tables instead of round ones. I sat with my cousins, honestly people I rarely talk to, and told them all about the work me and the step-cousins had done on the reception hall. I wish I had pictures of it because, honestly, the before and after is pretty impressive. The bride and her mother didn’t have anything to say about it–at least, my aunt said that the mom didn’t have anything nice to say–but I try to give the bride the benefit of the doubt. It’s not like she didn’t have other things on her mind that day. It was the first time I saw the “shoe game” being played. There was pop-up trivia as well, which I thought was kinda fun. I was obsessed with mason jars for years after that wedding, and I still prefer them as cups to this day.

But when the wedding was over, somebody had to tear it down. But with the entire wedding party present this time (minus the groom, bride, or any member of her family) as well as some added guests, it was done in less than an hour. My aunt later gave me a little monetary “thank-you” for my work. I’d like to say I didn’t accept it– even though I didn’t have to do the work, I did get a bonding experience with my step-cousins and didn’t spend the weekend doing boring alternative wedding stuff– but I was a 20-year-old college student. I thanked her and accepted the gift.

Another thing I’ll always remember about that trip: the day after the wedding I stopped at a Valero on the edge of town to fill up my car for the trip home and locked my keys inside. I tried to call my mom, my aunt–literally anybody. But there was barely signal and nobody would answer the phone, even after I tried the inside land-line. The convenience store owner suggested I try the conveniently-located Ford dealership across the street to see if they had any tricks. I was a shy girl and really didn’t feel like begging strangers, but I knew I didn’t have options, and I couldn’t hang out in the convenience store forever.

Thankfully, a kind soul at the Ford Dealership came with a wedge to open my car door, and I was on the road for almost half an hour before my mom finally called me back in a panic.

That’s the end of the DIY wedding story. Bottom line, if you expect a DIY wedding, then DO IT YOURSELF. It’s in the name! If you happen to see someone struggling with wedding decorations, maybe stop and help them out for a while. If you lock your keys in your car, make sure it’s next to your model dealership.

Also, my cousin is divorced now.

Seven Brides: The Middle-of-Nowhere Wedding

Hello, and welcome back to my series “Seven Brides”, where I recount the weddings in that I have had a behind-the-scenes role. Last time, I gave a brief overview of the weddings of my childhood that left a lasting impression on me…and apparently my brother, who decided at age 19 that he was going to be married by 20. After his future in-laws shut down the couple’s initial small-college-town-wedding plan, they moved the wedding to the bride’s hometown of The-Middle-of-Nowhere, Kansas.

Thus, I will refer to this as the “Middle-of-Nowhere” Wedding.

As mentioned before, it took some convincing for my parents to be on board with the whole college-age-son-getting-married thing. Part of the reason was because they weren’t doing so great financially at the time. Even though the bride’s family paid for the wedding, we still had to get there, pay for lodging, pay for the rehearsal dinner, and make sure we looked decent for the occasion. Two of us were in college and my younger brother was in private school, my mom wasn’t employed, and my father was only two years into his second career, making entry-level money. He also had half a dozen health problems (that contributed to his death in late 2012, about six months later) so medical bills were also sky high. We had a mini van that served us well for about twelve years before it slowly started to die, and now my parents knew there was no way that van was going to go from Houston to The-Middle-of-Nowhere. Therefore, a rental car was another additional expense.

I’ll rewind a bit. Like I said before, I did some blackmailing (that was apparently useless) to get to be in my brother’s wedding. My future sister-in-law added me to her bridesmaids’ chat, and gave us the responsibility of choosing a dress– as long as it came in bright red. We later agreed on black shoes, since the colors (for a June wedding in the Middle of Nowhere, Kansas) were RED AND BLACK. The girls passed around some ideas while online shopping, and we eventually went with a dress that was originally my pick. Therefore, I have no problem telling you it’s at the bottom of my bridesmaid dress list. It was trendy for the time: floor length, empire waist, one strap covered in silk flowers…you can see it, right? I didn’t realize when we selected it from the website that it had a sheer overlay, so it was an extra hassle for my mom to hem the dress for my short height. It also came with a red sash that we elected to wear as a shoulder wrap.

So we rolled up to The-Middle-of-Nowhere, Kansas in our black sedan rental, a car so full of luggage that literally all of our wedding specific clothing needed to be steamed and ironed afterward. I believe it was two days before the wedding. We had met my brother’s fiancée’s family one time before, during their high school graduation weekend in 2010. The town had a single motel that we stayed at. From what I can remember, it felt really old: like it hadn’t been updated since the 70s. I will say that the room was very spacious, despite the quantity of people.

We spent some time at my brother’s future in-laws’ home. I don’t remember a lot of it, but I do remember that his mother-in-law (whom I will now refer to as “Tee”) insisted on a tour of her garden and the father-in-law spent his time watching game shows. The rest of the wedding party arrived at some point: my brother’s college roommate, two of the bride’s college friends, and her sister and her husband. The last to arrive would be the best man, our cousin, the following day.

Speaking of which, let’s skip ahead (since I’m having trouble remembering literally anything about that first day, other than we were present– oh, and the bride and groom showed off their brand new Ford Focus hatchback, affectionately referred to as Pikachu for it’s bright yellow color). The next day we hit the town! And by “hit the town”, I mean my mom and I went to explore the local grocery store on the main strip. It was our job to pay for and host the rehearsal dinner, but in a town the size of a nickel, Tee had provided us with the number of the one place that could hold the bridal party and the families: a local senior center. We didn’t have anything fancy planned. We had called the local dominos and set up enough pizza and pasta to feed our party of “thirty-ish”, and we hit up the grocery for salad ingredients.

We went to decorate our little rehearsal dinner space. As with most of this story, I don’t remember too much about it. I had curled some ribbon and tied it in pretty red and white bows at the end of the extra-long fan strings, and when I asked my father what he thought, he said, “I wouldn’t have noticed if you hadn’t asked.” That was Dad for you, just the least helpful remarks possible. We counted chairs multiple times and still had no idea how many people we were actually supposed to be feeding. The space felt very small. It was probably meant for fifteen or twenty people instead of thirty. By the time we finished, we had to hustle to the church for the rehearsal– you know, a four minute drive from any given point in the town.

I’d never been to a wedding rehearsal before, and let me tell you that this is one part of the story I will not be forgetting. There was a lot of discussion on what order the wedding party should enter in. My dad told the groomsmen how not to have their hands, although I felt the way he told them to have them was not much better, and I had to walk with my scrawny younger brother. Also, to save money, each of us were given a single rose to carry instead of a bouquet–and I just want everyone to know that is my least favorite substitute for a bouquet. Instead of hiding my disproportionately small, chubby hands, let’s highlight them with a single stem that can’t even stay between my fingers. But anyway, as the wedding wasn’t about me, let’s move onto the actually interesting part.

It was at the rehearsal that we discovered that my SIL’s mother, Tee, was really the one running the wedding. She was very particular with how everything was supposed to be– way more particular than I felt a 50 guest wedding in the Middle-of-Nowhere, Kansas really needed. The clearest memory I have of the rehearsal was that she stood in for the flower girl. This grown woman walked up the aisle with her eyes closed, focusing so intently on her role as the flower girl that she paused and stepped, paused and stepped, draping imaginary flowers to her left and her right–with her eyes closed. All the way up the aisle.

No hate to Kansasians, but…are you guys okay?

My next clear memory is that, following the rehearsal dinner, the other bridesmaids and I went back to my SIL’s parents house for a “party”, and the guys had some sort of “party” on their own. Our party consisted of painting all of our nails a matching shade of red while watching “He’s Just Not That Into You”, until we decided we all hated the plot and twitched it off with half an hour left. The guys, I believe, just played video games.

I was pleasantly surprised when I got along really well with the other bridesmaids. I don’t normally make friends overnight. I don’t remember the Maid of Honor being present…it was possible she hadn’t arrived from the West Coast yet. (My apologies, if you ever happen to read this and also happened to be there.) One of the other girls had brought her boyfriend, who was welcome into the festivities. The other girl, like myself, was a music major. She may still be on my Facebook friends list. Because of them, I definitely enjoyed the weekend more than most of the other members in my family. What had been a chore of a trip was becoming more like a friend-cation for me.

My brother stayed with my family in the motel room that night. I don’t have a ton of memories of the next morning, except that Tee had offered my mom to get her hair and makeup done when Tee and my SIL went to get theirs done. The girls and I were also offered, and Tee paid. I blame my own hair problems on the fact that I didn’t know the right terminology for what I really wanted. I had told the hair stylist “half up, half down” and she delivered with too much teasing and some doll-looking curls. What I actually wanted was my hair curled, down, with a single clip holding my hair out of my eyes off to the side. So, just a heads up…make sure you have your terminology right when you’re talking to a stylist.

I declined to have my makeup done. At the time I didn’t trust anyone else with it…actually, it’s been almost a decade and that hasn’t changed. My mom never does her own makeup, so she agreed to have it done. But not only did the hair stylist also tease her hair, but also she made my mom look “Like a clown” according to my dad. He even said she looked like her youngest sister, who, until the last decade or so, used to wear pale powder, bright pink lips and blush, and the light blue eyeshadow that dominated the 1980s and 2000s. Well we got rid of my mom’s makeup and I tried to fix it myself, with acceptable success.

Did I mention that three of these weddings have cake disasters? Here’s the second one.

The wedding was the Middle-of-Nowhere. There wasn’t a bakery in the little town, unless it was just too expensive for what Tee and her husband were willing to pay for. The cake had been ordered from the nearest Walmart, a moderate 35 minute drive from the Middle-of-Nowhere in a town called Only-Exists-Because-There’s-An-Interstate-Junction. Are the roads windy? No. Are there sharp, sudden corners? Also no. Yet, for some reason, the three-tiered cake arrived with a whole quarter of the middle tier smooshed against the corner, the buttercream icing far gone.

Tee announced that she could fix it. She had some buttercream hanging around. Of course, nobody around an hour before the wedding was a professional cake decorator. Have you ever tried to ice a cake at room temperature? Has it ever come out looking as crisp as a professional(though Walmart) wedding cake? There was an obvious clump on the second tier where the buttercream had been patched–and it was twice as obvious because the clump was not white. It was definitely some mix between off-white and mustard yellow.

Yum.

We girls “got ready” in the youth room of the church they had rented for the ceremony. That’s in quotations because we all were told to arrive dressed, had already had our appointments with the hair and make-up lady. This resulted in us sitting around for almost two hours…including the bride. She had agreed to wear her mother’s dress, though to this day I couldn’t tell you if Tee had insisted on it, or if it was just a nice idea that my SIL had. The dress, as you may expect, was severely outdated. It originally had a lace collar and puff sleeves with a lace train. My SIL had it altered to fit her, except for the bottom. She’s a good few inches taller than her mother, and no fabric was added to accommodate for that. She did have the sleeves updated to be butterfly style. Additionally, there was no petticoat or kremlin underneath Definitely wouldn’t have been my choice…but again, it wasn’t my wedding.

That being said, the bridesmaids dresses– which, don’t forget, were my choice–were definitely not a great pick for that day. They had multiple polyester layers, they were uncomfortable, they had to be worn with multiple undergarments…like, what was I thinking? We had to be ready for the first round of pictures two hours before the ceremony, and I remember that by the end of the day I was beyond ready to take that thing off.

Just before the ceremony, I turned a corner to see my aunt, uncle, and 90-year-old grandfather. I knew Grandpa would come. He’d flown into Denver, the nearest major airport and also the city my aunt and uncle lived in, and they drove him over to the Middle-Of-Nowhere. My brother was his first grandchild to get married, so it was a big deal when he initially told my mom he probably wouldn’t be able to make it, and then later confirmed. I wasn’t at all shocked to see him– it was just the type of thing someone in my family would pull. Let’s pretend we can’t go places and break hearts so that they’ll be extra happy when we show up! Well, my mom definitely cried. My brother and SIL were happy he made it, too. Dad’s reaction was the same as mine. Obviously, Grandpa was going to come. I was kind of surprised that Mom didn’t see it coming.

I wish I could say I remember anything about the ceremony itself, but I definitely do not. It wasn’t noticeably short or long. My younger brother and I were making faces at one another at one point. There might be pictures somewhere. When the minister pronounced the couple husband and wife, I remember distinctly that my younger brother made the most grotesque face when our older brother kissed our SIL in the most awkward way.

I suppose I should say I can’t 100% for sure say that it was gross, because maybe it’s always gross when it’s your sibling and you’re a teenager.

There was a finger food reception, where my cousin played guitar after his toast. The maid of honor said something too (again, sorry I don’t remember you at all). The cake was cut, and, if I remember right, the presents were opened like some sort of wedding shower. While some of that was going on, the rest of the groomsmen (my brother’s roommate, my little brother, and my SIL’s younger brother) were outside decorating Pikachu in toilet paper, cans, and car paint. I made it outside just in time to watch one of them pour a bag of condoms into the front seat, and then proceeded to hide them in every nook they could find in the car.

The couple came out and the remaining guests came out to see them off, throwing the traditional rice (which is bad for birds, so don’t do that!) and waving their goodbyes with their digital cameras held high.

My family left town the next day, the first big wedding in the family behind us. My parents dropped me back off at college the day after that. In conclusion, this memory isn’t the most exciting. It was in a very un-exciting place, with less-than-amazing attire, unforgettable heat, and a lot of improvising from non-wedding pros for a low-key wedding. However, I also made some new friends, had that last memory of my Grandfather (not the very last, but he did pass away the following February) and had the first of my three cake disaster experiences.

A few months later, our cousin that had been my brother’s best man announced that he and his girlfriend had also decided to get married. The wedding was set for my brother and SIL’s first anniversary. That wedding is a bit more memorable…possibly because I’m still a little bitter about it.

But you’ll have to wait until next time for that.

Until then, overthink any wedding garment decisions you need to make, don’t throw rice at weddings, and get a local baker to make and transport your cake.

Seven Brides: A Series of…Events

I’m one of those people: always a bridesmaid…well, you know the rest. And truthfully, the rest doesn’t bother me. But with the opening of Wedding Season 2021, after the non-existent 2020 season, the never-ending torture of the invention that is Facebook memories, and my not-so-accidental binge of Say Yes to the Dress, I’ve been feeling a bit reminiscent lately.

Though I wasn’t a bridesmaid in all, I’ve been involved in seven weddings. I had a solid five or six summers where I either attended or was in at least one, if not multiple nuptials of family or friends. I’m at a point, actually, where most of my friends have been married off and I spend summers looking at the pictures of their babies and other married adventures. I definitely wouldn’t say that I’m an expert or anything. I just have a lot of stories that have been rounded up like a big wedding album full of wildcard extended family members.

To proceed this entire series, I thought I would recap the weddings of my childhood, though I don’t remember who any of the couples were, except for my aunt’s, which I probably only remember because we went to a funeral that morning. I was ten when attended the first wedding that left a lasting impression.

The bride was my cousin, who was 21 at the time and marrying her college boyfriend. I was 10, and I was so excited! It was in Denver (and if you’ve read my blog before you might know that we hail from Texas) so attending meant a family road trip (back when I enjoyed family road trips), seeing my close-in-age cousins (but in Denver) and–well, it was all just an adventure that I was excited to be a part of. I also had a great admiration for my older cousin, as I only had one female cousin on each side of my family and no sisters. We’ve actually never been “close”, but it didn’t keep me from imagining her as one of my best friends. I made sure to pick out a beautiful pink and white dress for the wedding, and my mom got me one of those little rose hair pins to go in my bobbed, permed hair (an era of my life I rarely talk about and try especially hard not to show pictures of).

I’m surprised at how much ten-year-old me retained from that wedding. First, there were ushers, and I had never been to a wedding with ushers. I specifically remember rejecting the usher’s offer to walk me to my seat multiple times before I realized that’s what he was supposed to be doing. Second, I’m pretty sure it was the first time I heard “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring” during a non-Christmas season. Third, there was a 6-year-old flower girl that wasn’t me, and I was a little bitter about that, even though I was too old to be a flower girl. Fourth, my uncle had a long speech (but I don’t think he married them, even though he’s ordained) that ended with a friend of someone singing “Butterfly Kisses”, and there was a slideshow with “Tale As Old As Time” in the background. I also thought that my cousin’s dress was the most beautiful I’d ever seen– it had a strapless, beaded bodice and a full, tulle skirt– as well as a tiara, because those were the wedding trends of 2003. It was storming outside and it was dark in the little church, only lit by an overabundance of candles, but the weather didn’t seem to impact the mood.

The reception was a whole different vibe. They rented out a penthouse event center in downtown Denver, and we ate a catered, Italian meal. There was both bride and groom cake, and the groom’s cake was a sheet cake decorated to look like a football field at a Redskins vs. Cowboys game, (representing the joining of a divided household). The couple entered through a lineup of tuxedoed event staff daintily blowing bubbles, and we clanged spoons against glasses so many times that they might have gotten annoyed with all the kissing. But we might have left early, as that’s about all I remember from the reception.

It’s crazy looking back, thinking how grown up she was, how great it must be for her to be an adult and get married! Now I’m fast approaching 28, and I’m like, Wow! She was so young! They’re still married, btw. They have two kids. She’s a CEO of a hospital. So really, 18 years later, they’re still “goals”, if you get what I mean.

The next wedding I attended was a couple of years later, again for a cousin. This time, it was one of my male cousins, tying the knot at age 20. The dress (as 12-year-old me was most invested in) was similar to my other cousin’s tulle gown from two years before, and there may or may not have been a tiara? The bridesmaids were also wearing blue and pink, and I remember thinking it must have been a cotton candy theme. Anyway, the reception was a potluck reception– the only one I’ve been to, although I’ve heard they’re growing into more of a thing these days– and I remember we didn’t bring food and we also brought a cousin from my mom’s side that was spending a few weeks with us, and I was really stressed about whether or not he was really “allowed” to be there.

The next lasting-impression wedding I attended was when I was 16– the first wedding of any of my friends. Growing up, our church “youth-group” usually had about fifteen kids in it, but there was a standing roster of a few key families. The groom of this wedding was the oldest of the “friend group”, and I was the baby. The bride and groom had dated for years by the time they finally got married, even though they were 19 and 22 respectively. He already had a business of some kind and they were both in nursing school. I was away at boarding school during all the planning and wasn’t offended when I wasn’t included in the wedding party. I only arrived home from school three days before the wedding itself, and I was invited to all the group events over the weekend.

The wedding itself was a garden wedding, and the first wedding I attended that wasn’t in a church. I remember it was hot, since they got married in the early evening on the first Sunday in June– in Houston– but very romantic in feel. There was a string quartet, the flowers were white and yellow roses, the dresses and suits were navy, and the bride’s dress was beaded ivory. The reception was in the event center’s reception all, and the guests were seated at round tables that outlined a dance floor. It was also the first wedding I attended with a seating chart, and my mom and I were seated with other church members. I was raised in one of those traditional denominations where dancing isn’t really a thing, so I was a little confused about the dance floor until the “evening’s entertainment” arrived in the form of some form of Latin dancer that did some sort of bull-fighter thing with the groom…really, it was weird. I found out later that the father-of-the-bride paid for that, and they just didn’t argue. I guess it was entertaining enough, but still left the guests with this look on their face of “……?”

Oh, here is the first of the cake “disasters”. 3 weddings in a row, beginning with this one, I attended weddings that had something wrong with the cake. This was probably the most mild of the three. First, the mother-of-the-bride insisted that she wanted to make the cake herself, even though the couple had budgeted for a professionally made cake. To my knowledge, she had never made wedding cakes before. The first problem was that she made three tiers and did not know how to stack them, so they ended up being three separate cakes. Somebody made the situation better by putting them on various levels of plant stands and decorating the table. However, the fondant coating was impossible to eat, and we ended up scraping the carrot cake out of it like it was a silicon mold instead of icing (which is my favorite part of any cake). So, not the best cake experience. But as you’ll find later, it was not the worst, either.

Anyway, all of these couples are still married and have kids and stuff, living their best lives. That last wedding was the last wedding I attended as a guest for several years.

Fast forward a few more years, to where I will now set up the next entry in this series. I should’ve known, with all these people that got married pretty young in the previous lineup of weddings, that somebody would’ve gotten some ideas as they approached their own 19th birthday. That somebody, of course, was my older brother. He had been dating this girl for about three years. They’d met in high school and went to college together. But my parents were shocked and… I don’t want to say angry, but I definitely wouldn’t not say angry…when he announced he was going to propose to his girlfriend at Christmas. They had good reasons for being against the whole thing. First of all, their relationship had been really rocky as it was, with at least one break up per year and then a lot of arguing and there were things with her family and ya de ya de ya–you know, typical life-isn’t-perfect things.

I knew my parents’ logic was valid, but I also was really excited at the idea of finally being in a wedding, since I spent my entire childhood watching from the audience. I knew my parents had a higher chance of listening to me, mostly because I have better logic and argument skills than my older brother, so I told him if I got to be a bridesmaid, then I would help him out. He said the girlfriend had already talked about that, and obviously all of their collective siblings would be in their wedding, so I got to work on my strategy. I actually took credit for the sway of my parents for several years before my mom informed me that the truth was that they decided that my brother was an adult and just support his decisions, and that my arguments really didn’t hold weight. I think my younger brother was just amused that my parents were fighting with someone other than him.

I don’t know if it was to spite my parents or because he was afraid they would change their minds, but either way, my brother fast-tracked his proposal plans and asked his girlfriend to marry him over Thanksgiving, instead of Christmas. Within a week they had a date set for June, allowing them 7 months to plan their wedding. Originally they planned to get married in their college town with a small ceremony with their immediate families and whatever friends could make it. However, the bride’s parents insisted on hosting the wedding in their hometown, which was, what I have henceforth referred to, as The-Middle-Of-Nowhere, Kansas.

And thus began my journey of being “always a bridesmaid”, and I had no idea how unromantic weddings actually were…

A New Heading

I haven’t blogged in a couple of months. Actually, the only blogging I did this year was more of a self-reflection of college and career choices — choices that ultimately led to years of waffling around in my 20s. The last blog post I did any updating was “The Post Christmas Blues”. That entry came from a very discouraged place in my heart, and ended with my conclusion that I had no idea how to progress my life from Christmas 2020 to Christmas 2021.

But I knew I had to do something, so I pulled myself together (as one does) and came up with a resolution for 2021. I wanted to apply and enroll in a master’s degree program.

When I was in college, the professors always talked about graduate school. I think a lot of students will agree that it feels like a very logical next-step if you don’t have a career lined up or planned out. However, even back then, I literally never wanted to get a masters in music. After my disastrous senior recital, I knew I’d never be accepted to a performance-based program. I never had the aptitude (and let’s be real, any inkling of a desire) for advanced music theory and analysis. I briefly entertained the thought of studying ethnomusicology, but that was more of a hypothetical throw-away.

I went back and forth on pursuing a masters in education. It’s not uncommon for education employers to pay for their teachers’ higher degrees, and it would allow me to potentially be an administrator in the future. I didn’t find love or passion in my education or certification classes, but I didn’t hate them, and they weren’t difficult. Had I stayed on a more consistent teaching path, I might have gone on to earn an M.Ed.

But being mostly unemployed the last two years, I knew that I wanted to focus on a masters degree in a field that I really wanted to study. If I was going to go another 20k-30k into debt, I was going to do it for something I loved, as well as something that could open new career paths.

I’ve been a writer my entire life. I could go into great detail about the many manuscripts I’ve started (and the small percentage that I’ve actually finished). I’ve come close to self-publishing multiple times. It had always been strictly a hobby–mostly because I was mortified at the idea of anyone reading something I’d written. (17-year-old Annie would have died if she knew you were reading this.) But the truth is, I always loved it more than music. The first time I entertained the idea of earning an MFA was in 2016, the year before I went to Tulsa. At the time, I felt there was no way I could afford to go, and I didn’t think it would open any more opportunities than my bachelor’s degree. I tucked away the notion for a few years.

After I stepped away from full-time teaching, had a quarter-life crisis and reevaluated my life (not to mention 2020 came into our lives like an obnoxious, audacious lion), I’d changed in a few fundamental ways. First, I wasn’t afraid to have people read my writing anymore. In fact, I may have shocked my closest friends by announcing this secret hobby I’d been hiding my entire life. An acquaintance from my early years of college posted an open invitation to a writing accountability group that I accepted, and so I gained some more friends with similar interests. Additionally, now being in my late twenties, more of my friends also have or are earning their masters degrees, and I had a much better understanding of the process. Last fall I did a lot of research, but the idea of the debt continued to hold me back.

I finally came to terms with the money and committed to apply to multiple schools by the end of the month. Because of where I’m at in life, I decided to look for online programs. I spent a lot of time on the phone and online talking to admission and enrollment councilors. I reached out to various communities to ask for advice and suggestions. I narrowed down a short list for recommendation letters (which was originally going to be several paragraphs of this post, but I decided just to let you know that the Wind Symphony director from my “Why I Left Music” series was one of them, and I’ll just let you deduce the emotional rollercoaster that became for me). Once I applied, I had to polish up writing samples, figure out how the heck statement of purposes work for humanities (because the internet is obsessed with science-driven SOPs) and finally, after a relieving acceptance letter, I enrolled in an MFA program in the one I had been most interested in from the beginning.

I had originally planned to start in the fall and have a few months to save up money. But after my FAFSA was approved to cover the majority of my expenses, I was convinced to begin in the upcoming term. Therefore, (coincidentally) on the same date that I graduated with my bachelors in 2015, I began my MFA in Creative Writing. The past three weeks have been a lot of work and adjustment, but I think I’m finally getting the hang of it. Both classes I’m in have posted grades this week, and I’m thrilled to tell my handful of followers that I currently have As in both!

It’s crazy to think that after my first ten years of adult hood, this is where I am now. I don’t have a fully developed plan for my career, or even for my degree program right this moment, but I know that it’s a step in the right direction. The discouragement I felt just after Christmas drove me to make changes in my life. After a full year of unstable employment and waffling around, I’m now in school, have a steady part-time job, and a destination for my next chapter of life.

This was really just an update post, so it’s shorter with less reflection. But perhaps you saw yourself in my story. Maybe you know someone that feels aimless in life. I’ll just leave my handful of followers with these words, the constant reminder of my posts: eat, pray, and keep on.

Why I Left Music: Part Three

If you’ve read my blog before, you probably know that I used to be a music teacher. In Part One (read it here) I elaborated on the red flags I had in my college career. Long story short, I was far from the star student, a department reject, and a failure at performance. In Part Two (read it here) I managed to graduate. After many dead ends, I got a job at a school full of red flags in East Texas. It only lasted a year, and then I took a year off before I found a school that really seemed to fit me in Tulsa, OK. After two years of empty promises, I made the hard decision to leave. Before the school year ended, I had an interview opportunity in California at a school that I considered a dream job.

It was Week of Prayer when I returned to work the Monday after my interview. Now, if you’re not familiar with Christian school systems or the traditional “Week of Prayer” (in college sometimes they called it “Week of Spiritual Emphasis” to sound cool or something, I don’t know) what happens is that time for a special service or program is carved out of the school schedule every day so students can have a concentrated focus on an aspect of spirituality. I’ve only experienced one for every semester of every year I spent in Christian schools, so I wasn’t expecting this one to be as memorable as it became. Capping it off was homecoming weekend, so my high school choir has one of their last performances of the year. We’d been working on Craig Courtney’s “Our Father”, which is an arrangement of the Lord’s Prayer. Courtney is one of my favorite choral composers, and the song was just the right amount of challenging for the students to excel at it.

The week started out well. My colleague/good friend that was my connection to the job originally, the Math Teacher, invited a team of two semi-local pastors (shoutout to Two Guys and the Word) to come do a series for our 7-12th grade students. I don’t really remember the details of the series. They were funny and interacted with the kids. They hung out for a couple of ours after chapel ended so interact with the students in their school environments. Because we had a performance coming up, I had choir every day instead of just two days that week. Monday went as I expected it to, although I knew we’d have to really improve by our performance on Saturday. I was mostly sure that I was going to get the job in California, and I thought as soon as I knew, that’s when I could tell the kids that I was leaving.

Tuesday is when it all went to hell. I got a call during my planning period from the principal in California. She used the infamous words, they’d “decided to go in another direction.” I was obviously disappointed, but my disappointment was amplified by the fact that this had now happened multiple times. This was hiring season #5 where I would have another dead end. I would pick up an inevitable, terrible job in the fall–or move back in with my mother. This was the second time that I’d thought I had landed a dream job. And the hiring season was almost over this time. There wouldn’t be any last minute redemption for me. Even though some of my kids knew I was leaving, the majority did not. I was close to my high school kids, and I decided I would just let them find out when it was announced at the spring concert the following week.

Unfortunately, I am not a poker face type of person. I was in a bad mood the rest of the week. All of my emotions couldn’t be contained. We didn’t make the progress that we should have on our song. Wednesday through Friday, I felt like all the kids did was mess around, and all I did was snap at them. I taught many classes that week on the verge of tears but unable to say anything. Most of the teachers didn’t even know. The layers didn’t stop there. Two Guys and the Word had carefully crafted their 5 day series to get serious on Thursday and Friday. The topic I remember was what to do when you’re angry, either with someone or with God. And let me tell you if you didn’t assume so already–I was very angry with God. And I’m not normally one to blame my problems on God. I didn’t even blame God when my dad died when I was nineteen. I knew better than to assume God didn’t care about me. I had seen his work in my teaching career thus far, and it’s not like an opportunity that had failed two years before hadn’t led me to being in Tulsa with my kids that I loved. There was no reason for me to assume that this lost opportunity wouldn’t lead to bigger and better things. Still, no matter how much I tried to talk myself out of my emotions, I couldn’t help it. I was angry. The talks that the pastors had crafted for the teenagers were hitting home way harder for me.

It all came to a head that Friday night. I had to come to terms with the week. I cried for hours. But when I stopped, I knew I was done. I had to move on. I had wronged my kids by taking out my frustrations on them. I spent the rest of the night coming up with a good apology, because I knew we couldn’t perform the next day until I had made things right.

Saturday morning the kids met me in our normal practice space. The space was actually shared with the church so the tables were set up for lunch that day, and we had to move them out of the way. We did some warm ups for a few minutes before I told them to sit down. I asked them to listen carefully and respectfully because I might not get through what I needed to tell them. I told them it was a rough week and it wasn’t their fault. I told them I was leaving. I told them I had been in California for a job interview– a dream job I didn’t get. I told them it wasn’t the first time I’d lost a dream job. I told them that when I came to Tulsa, it was less than ideal, but it was money and a hopeful future. I told them that Tulsa wasn’t my dream job, but they were my dream kids (met with a lot of awws and I said, “thanks, I rehearsed” and we laughed). I told them I had wanted to tell them that I was moving on to bigger and better things, but now I was just telling them that I had to leave. And then I told them that I had realized the night before that I had been there for two years, and I had never really done my job–not in the way that mattered most.

In high school and college all of my teachers and professors seemed to have a knack for weaving the music together with devotional thoughts or passionate theology. I’ve never been good with speaking the way I’d seen them to be. I had never known how to convince kids that were being forced to sing for a grade that despite their lack of choice in the matter, what they were doing was important to God. (I’m also not a fan of using God to guilt-trip kids into doing things). But now I knew I had something to tell them, which I will now also tell you.

As I mentioned, we were doing “Our Father” by Craig Courtney. If you’re not familiar with the Lord’s prayer, there’s a part that goes, “thy will be done”. It’s hard to say thy will be done when you feel like it’s screwed you over. It’s hard to pray at all when you feel like God has done nothing but let you down for the past four years. In a way, I couldn’t say it at all. There’s a famous saying: “When words fail, music speaks.” That’s what music is for. That’s what makes it a ministry. Even though I refused to say it, when I heard the words thy will be done, God hears the struggles on your heart. He knows the prayer that a conflicted, angry, and hurt soul needs to pray without you having that same surrender. I told the kids, we don’t sing for ourselves, even though yes, some of them were only there for a grade. We have to sing for people in the audience that maybe are a lot worse off than not getting a job. Maybe a man has received a hard diagnosis. Maybe a teenager has been kicked out of her house. Maybe someone did lose another dream job. Maybe someone would have to say goodbye to her dream kids in only two short weeks. When we sing a song that is meant to be a prayer, we indirectly pray on behalf of anyone that is listening.

That day was the best performance my high schoolers ever did. We performed the same song at our spring concert a few days later (although because of a whole other story it was less than perfect). I have a recording of the spring performance that I watch sometimes when I miss them or know I have to remember the lesson I had to teach both myself and my kids that day. Even though I was heartbroken to leave Tulsa, I knew I had done right by my kids. Somehow I knew that if I never taught music again, I had fulfilled my purpose.

Meanwhile, Bob (remember, my friend Bob from Part 2?) was just as upset as (and sometimes I think more than) I was about my job fall-through. He tried to get me a job at his school in Cali, but too many details reminded me of past mistakes I’d made. It was part-time, there were some promises without evidence, it was a “potential” stepping stone to bigger and better things…I knew I couldn’t go. I humored him at the beginning, since we were both upset. But I had already moved in with my mom when I got a call for an interview. By then I was tired from packing and unpacking. I felt confused. I didn’t know what I wanted to do. My mom insisted that another year off would do me good, and I knew I couldn’t keep taking risks because I was desperate. I declined to even meet with the hiring committee. I knew I might live to regret it, but at least I wouldn’t be across the country with no money. I signed up to be a substitute teacher in the Tyler school district.

Around this time I was granted my teaching certification (that Tulsa paid for, thanks to my second-year negotiations) and I found out that I effectively had a minor in history (overlooked by both my college advisor and the graduation registrar at my alma mater–the only thing I would have needed was a minor thesis) that granted me full teaching credentials for high school social studies within our school system. I started to look into state certification for social studies. The biggest difference between my system-specific certification and the national/state ones is the standardized testing requirement, so I knew it wouldn’t be difficult to get if I could pass the test. However, one look at the music test told me that I was never going to make it as a music teacher in the state system. Even if I learned all the material, I’ve never been a good tester. I was in the top 30% of my graduating high school class, but I only had a 21 on the ACT. I only made A’s in AP English, but failed to pass the test. I failed my undergraduate exit exam, but nobody knows but me since they only use it for statistics and data. My history of failures continued to haunt me the longer I researched certification.

I spent the next several months substituting in my local high schools. I had a long-term English position for about six weeks where they even offered to help me get certified if I was interesting in taking on the position permanently. I didn’t have a real desire to teach English, though, and it was clear the priority was the STARR tests (which, spoiler alert, they cancelled a month after the job ended because of the pandemic, and I have a whole separate rant on why they need to either eradicate the tests or seriously revise their content). I enjoyed substituting, though. I liked main main schools. I found that I enjoyed teaching in a traditional, non-music classroom almost as much, if not more, than I had teaching ensembles. Outside of my long-term assignment, I didn’t do a lot of instruction. Substitute teachers being “glorified babysitters” is an understatement, especially at the high school level. I often was able to sit, write, or research while on the job.

Hiring season came around once again– hiring season #6. I began to browse through the music jobs out of habit, but I only applied to social studies positions. (See my first blog post, “Happiness is not a Job“, for that emotional roller coaster.) I applied to several schools. This time, I didn’t get a single callback or reply email. I got laid off from substitute teaching because of the pandemic. Our world was also turned upside-down when my mom’s company offered impressive retirement incentives to prevent unnecessary layoffs. After she retired, we moved home to Houston.

That’s how it all seemed to come full circle. It was now 2020 and I was back in the same house I had come home to in 2016. At first, I thought I had taken four steps back. Then, slowly, I realized that the last four years of experience had changed me. Working with the teenagers, experiencing personal injustice, endlessly searching for answers–it had upgraded the way I approached problems.

To be brutally honest and vulnerable with you, I was terrified of asking the question, “What if God doesn’t want me to be a music teacher? What if I’m fighting God’s will? Who am I supposed to be, if not a music teacher? What am I, if not a musician?” To ask the questions is the only way to get them answered. I began to really look back on my musical career. I kept thinking that the fact I survived my program was a sure sign of God’s will for my life. But now, as I took a long, hard, painful look back on my career and college before, I realized that the positives I had been clinging to were gone. They had been for some time, in fact. We had been close-knit in college, but once we went our separate ways, I fell out of touch with most of them. I have very few friends from college left. Even Bob and I had a fallout after I declined the job opportunity. Music as a hobby had turned me off ages before, when I realized that I did not retain enough of my education to keep up with technical music conversation. Unless speaking with an amateur, any conversation I had about the topic led to a shameful embarrassment on my part. There was even one Christmas where I had a conversation about modes with my cousins, who are amateur guitarists in varying genres, and I was lost in the first thirty seconds. And of course, my musical jobs, while speckled with good times, served to teach me harsh lessons instead of an overabundance of the rewarding teaching life that I’d imagined. I also knew that, while I was headed in a good direction with Tulsa, I would never be a competitive music instructor that had a niche or groove that stood out from the rest.

I became very bitter about music during that time of questioning. I even became annoyed and angry when I realized that even my church or extended family didn’t seem to know anything about me other than that I was musically “talented”. Music was my only identity–not only to me, but to the world around me, except perhaps my closest friends and family. I have many other qualities and even some hobbies that I’ve talked about on this blog before, but I almost always get asked about the “drums” and when I’m going to get another music teaching job. Sometimes people send me job postings. Sometimes I get asked endless questions on if I’d ever play professionally, and where do I keep my timpani, and why don’t I join a community group? I know that they mean well, but the questions accidentally became a test of who has really kept up in my life–who really cares…and the list is painfully short.

At first, these instances added to my insecurities as I continued asking the questions. I thought by asking, “What if God doesn’t want me to be a music teacher?” I would be answered, “Then you will never find your true path.” I thought by asking, “What if I’m fighting God’s will?” I would be answered, “That’s why you deserved all the terrible things that happened to you.” I thought by asking, “Who am I supposed to be, if not a music teacher?” the answer would be, “A failure that couldn’t even make it as a music teacher in subpar systems.” And worst of all, I thought if I asked, “What am I, if not a musician?” the answer would be, “Nobody.”

But as I get older, I am finding more and more everyday that life is not so black-and-white. I did receive that answers to my questions, and–Praise God!–the answers changed my life.

“What if God doesn’t want me to be a music teacher? What if I’m fighting God’s will?” If God never wanted me to be a music teacher, he would have closed every door from the very beginning. He needed me to be in East Texas when I was. He needed me to be at Tulsa when I was. I didn’t realize it right away, but over the last two years I’ve had multiple former students to reach out to me to tell me that they knew they knew that I loved God and loved them. Even more so, none of them were in the group that I shared that defining moment with in Tulsa just before I left. Whenever I hear “Our Father”, I know that God wanted me there and I served my purpose. Just because he doesn’t want me in music anymore doesn’t mean that he didn’t have a deeper purpose for me in those rough years, and it doesn’t mean that the injustices that happened to me were a part of some sort of punishment. In fact, I now think that those harsh environments conditioned me to be far more resilient than I ever was as a collegiate or a young teacher. I sometimes wonder how different those environments would have been if I could stand my ground then the same way I do now with ease.

“Who am I supposed to be, if not a music teacher?” There’s a lot more depth to the question itself. A lot of my identity was associated with my career because I’ve never been one for relationships. It’s not that I didn’t want them, because I had my eye on a variety of men over the years, but I never saw myself getting married right out of college or giving up everything to travel the world with a guy. But this meant that while every other girl on Facebook got a boyfriend, then engaged, then married, and then had a baby (most of my friends are now on second and third rounds of babies) the only thing I really had to show for myself was a diploma and a resume. But now, without that, I didn’t have anything. I moved back in with my mom. We moved back in with my brother and his wife. While I’ve preached that life is more than a career or family for years, it took all of this to get me on a path to understanding it for myself on a deeper level.

“What am I, if not a musician?” Well…I am a musician. It is sorrowful to me that timpani is a closed chapter in my life (a 15-year, gradual progressive case of carpal tunnel syndrome has rendered me physically unable to play) but I am still a regular church pianist. I still sing for my own enjoyment. I still play ukulele to think of my students. I don’t have to be a professional musician to be a musician. But I am more than just a musician. In fact, the title “musician” can get in line behind everything else. The most important thing I want to be associated with isn’t a hobby or a career or a family. It’s Christ. If I follow my top priority to inhibit a little more of His character every day, then the rest will fall into place in His time.

The past ten years of my life have not been easy (and they seem really short when I pack them into three blog posts). I’m not going to lie, I don’t have a super clear path ahead. All the questions have not been answered. But if you’ve been reading my blog for a while (or even just looked at the title) you know it’s all about “keeping on”. Music is no longer a defining part of my life. I am no longer interested in pursuing music jobs. I might not teach for a long time, and I don’t think I’ll be taking any jobs in our church schools for a while. But that’s okay. In fact, it’s great! I was missing out on so many things because I was obsessed with fitting into a box I’d created for myself. Even though my resume looks like a list of failures with no current employment in the top slot, my life is more abundant and fulfilling now than it ever was before.

Lastly, if you’re in an identity crisis of your own, consider these words of wisdom that took me ten years to apply to my own life: your world is not black-and-white. You are more than you think you are. You are more than what others think of you. You’re definitely more than your transcripts or your resume, and your worth is not defined by earthly measures. If you think you’ve messed up, know that I have moved six times in five years; there has never been a place where God has not used me, nor has there ever been a place God has not changed me. Your mistakes are not obstacles for His will in your life. Don’t be afraid to let it all go and never look back.

That being said….never say never.

Why I Left Music: Part Two

So, as you’ve read in the previous post, I spent my college career constantly trying to reach a level of music proficiency that, frankly, I never reached. I worked hard in my wind ensemble, both with performance and leadership. But the director, my Advisor, fell into a constant habit of criticizing me to the point where I never knew if I was actually at fault. Dr. E changed the game when he recruited me to the orchestra. In my upperclassman years, I finally achieved proper ensemble performance. My solo performance was a different story. My first two years, I didn’t have a real percussion teacher. When I finally did get one, there was no way he could have crammed four years of professional tutorship into the two I had left. The most difficult piece in my senior recital has been categorized as junior level repertoire. For reasons that are still largely unknown to me, I was not permitted to perform in regular recitals for almost two and a half years. This led to a severe case of performance anxiety that crippled me during my senior recital, thus producing the performance that I still consider to be the greatest failure of my life. Yet, despite all the signs that I should have quit right then and there, I persevered into the real world.

Something else you should know is that my alma mater did not offer a Music Education degree at the time of my attendance. They were just booting up the program my junior year, and if I’d switched tracks I would’ve spent three or four extra semesters in college. I had been advised as a freshman to get my performance degree and find a job that would pay for my certification. While that was the usual way music teachers did it up until the late 2000s, by 2015 that path was outdated. That’s a fact I learned the hard way.

Quick Rewind: let’s back up a bit to January of my senior year. There were two music majors that were going to graduate that year, both of us on the same performance degree/teacher-cert-later track. One was me (hello, yes, we’ve met). Let’s call the other Bob. Bob was a clarinetist, but it seemed he was well-versed in all areas of the department. He could play most wind instruments at a first-year level. He could accompany most pieces on piano. He was a lead baritone in choir. He arranged the bulk of our church performance music. He was even recognized for a piece he arranged for our senior year music festival, the largest audience of the year. The professors loved him, and with good reason. I’ll never say that Bob didn’t deserve the hype. We were actually good friends at the time. He was the instrumental librarian and equipment manager, so with the overlap from our classes, ensemble-related equipment work, and a larger friend circle, we spent almost all of our time together that year. We worked on one another’s resumes and cover-letters for music teaching jobs for the fall of 2015. Bob started applying way earlier than I did. By the end of January, he was getting interviews. He was all but set-up for his dream job when it fell through and they went “another direction”, and it devastated him.

When this happened, I had just started applying for jobs. I talked him into applying to some himself. One specifically I applied to in California had similar parameters to the job he’d just lost in the running. He told me he wasn’t interested, and I insisted he consider it. Because we had the same background on paper, we had a lot of overlap in references. One day the Cali job called Advisor (whom you’ll remember from the previous post) and asked him for a reference for me. The way Advisor told me about it, they were looking for more names to have more options, so he gave them Bob’s (and was I okay with that? he wanted to know) I didn’t know what else to say, so I tried to take the high road and told him if Bob was better for the school, then so be it. I don’t know what actually happened on the phone call because Bob heard a different version from the hirers later. He of course went on to three rounds of interviews and did get the job. They paid for his certification and now they’re paying for his masters degree. That’s right, he still works there. And to be honest, I think he’s done way more for them than I ever could have.

It might have put a riff in our friendship for a minute, but I applied to seven schools that year, and I think both Bob and I assumed that my job offer would be right around the corner. But after I interviewed at three schools and never made it past a first round, I began to think that I wasn’t going to be a music teacher that year. I left the dormitory after graduation and our choir trip to Europe and moved in with my mom, who lived in Waco, TX at the time. Waco wasn’t far from my friends but visits were few and far between, and my mom worked long hours. I found that I was lonely and depressed much of the summer. I didn’t know if I could survive being in a city by myself with a job that meant nothing to me. I began to follow any lead I could get my hands on. I even applied to be an assistant dean at a couple boarding academies. But the job that I ended up taking was at an independent private school in East Texas.

This place had so many red flags. A week after my first interview, the principal called me to ask if I was going to use my percussion degree to influence students in a negative way. They required me to sign a contract before I saw the campus. They required that you live in provided housing (and just a heads up, never work somewhere with required provided housing) and they were super shady about their expectations. I found out the month after school started that the school wasn’t even accredited.

Actually, it didn’t take me long at all to discover that nothing about that place was academically (or, scary enough, literally) sound. Three out of eight teachers had bachelor degrees. My roommate was the only one certified with any sort of certification. The rest were in college but had not completed anything. One of the teachers had been “finishing his degree” for six years. The administration were business people and were primarily concerned with getting the most for the least amount of money we could spend. The curriculum was 100% online because they didn’t want to buy textbooks, but the internet was so bad that at least two days a week classes would be cancelled or, at the most, given busy-work.

Music was both part of and an exception to this problem. I tried to integrate actual standards for my classes and not just prep them for performances, which was the expectation. Most of my kids relied on memorization to learn their parts and couldn’t read music. When I tried to fix it, the admin wanted to know why they didn’t spend more time on performance prep. I also had a responsibility to run music in chapel every day (yes, every day) and these kids did not want to sing. I eventually got a class-team-situation going, and then choir sign-up requirements, because I couldn’t lead chapel by myself. However, I will say that I tripled my piano proficiency to save that chapel experience, and that never would’ve happened otherwise. My piano skills helped me boost my choir rehearsals as well, but I still got a lot of misunderstanding when it came to my academic structure of choir as a class. I could write a whole post on the East Texas school and why I left, but I think it’s better to just remain a year of lessons learned in my life and move on. It seems like such a small part of the story these days…

It was a rough year, but not without some good outcomes. In addition to re-learning piano, I absolutely loved teaching handbell choir. I made a few really good friends (one of which, my roommate, sadly passed away a few years later). I learned a lot of what not to do while teaching, and saved enough money to pay my students loans for more than a year after I stopped working. However, I was more than ready to leave when the year ended. Publicly, I blamed the low pay, but the truth is that money was the least of my problems. The academic pushback was probably at the top of the list, followed by: subpar living conditions, the isolated location, gilt-tripping manipulation and multiple disagreements over student discipline with the administration. I think part of that place was just as happy to see me leave.

Administration and other cons aside, teaching itself seemed to change me on a cellular level. I really liked working with teenagers. I’ve always been a bit of a softy, so learning to stand up for myself with both them and my older colleagues seemed to go hand-in-hand. I found that it was much easier to gain respect from the teens. I had been given advice early on that I had to stand my ground and assert my authority, but I found the more I tried, the more prideful and hypocritical I came across. I turned to new methods. I learned how to hear out a student’s concerns and excuses. I tried to give an occasional second chance. I was open to student suggestions. I tried to have fair discipline and logical consequences that went beyond grades and write-ups (which were so inconsistent with the admin that I might as well have saved my paper). Furthermore, I knew that I would have to educate myself on being an educator. Since I had no education classes and an administration that believed all you needed was more faith, I did the research myself. By the end of the year, I felt I’d aged a decade. But it was worth it. I think my students knew that I wanted to do right by them. I kept up with some of them for a while, and occasionally still chat with a couple of them if they pop up on Instagram. One kid recently (five years later) said he’d learned to play an old choir song on piano and wanted me to know that I’d inspired him–and he wasn’t even one of my closest students.

I left East Texas and returned home to Houston. I had a couple of phone interviews, but nothing substantial that year. I signed up to be a substitute teacher at my local church school and public district. I looked into teaching certification but couldn’t afford it, and I knew after one look at the practice test that I might never be able to teach in public school. I understood that my level of teaching was already low, and my level of performance even lower. That year was the first time I realized I might not make it as a music teacher in the long term. The red flag school in East Texas had left a sour taste in my mouth, and I wasn’t so sure teaching was for me.

This is where Bob comes back into the story. As I said, we were good friends. We had corresponded constantly since we’d parted ways after our last post-graduation performance. He’s probably one of the only things that got me through the red flag school. The summer of 2016, after I quit, we went from texting every couple of days to a constant stream of communication. I told him about the research I’d been doing and my doubts that I could pass a board exam. He insisted I could do it, but to this day I am convinced that he did not understand how much more difficult musical technicalities were for me. When I told him I thought I might not return to teaching at all, he tried to convince me otherwise. He said that I had to try a “real” school– a school with accreditation and accountability. I wasn’t convinced I would ever be hired at one. After all, I had now gone two hiring seasons without a “real” job. Bob wasn’t ready to give up on me, though, and he invited me to spend a week with him in California to see what his job was actually like.

I assumed that going to observe Bob would just remind me how inferior I was to him as a musician, but the trip actually proved the opposite. The school in California was a much better school than the one in East Texas. His position spanned K-12 instead of the secondary position I’d had at the red flag school. It had both vocal and instrumental programs, as well as general elementary that Bob taught and directed. He strategically planned my stay around a performance, and I ended up doing some work myself. I saw his levels of band and even helped with his percussionists. I watched him teach elementary classes to cute little kiddos and aided in teaching his lesson. I helped his kids with hand bell choir since that was something new to his school that year and I had a year experience. I would say that Bob succeeded in convincing me that my terrible school had been at least half my problem.

I was still unemployed when I returned to Houston and only a quarter into the school year, but I knew I needed to try to land a good school before I quit my entire career plan. I still had six months before high-tide hiring season. I found ways to improve my chances. I was asked to run an honors choir at the church school, and I went twice a week to meet with 10 dedicated kids. I ran a children’s ministry at my church. I took on leadership responsibilities with the youth department. I became a regular pianist and praise team member–something I never would have done prior to my work in East Texas, but was now something that I was uniquely suited for in my group. Sometimes I call that year my year in ministry, because the awakening I found while teaching only deepened with my work with the church. My priorities were shifting and realigning. In hindsight, I can see that I was becoming less selfish.

I participated in the old alma mater music festival that year. Bob brought some of his students, and our younger friends were still in school. Those first few years after graduation I helped the alma mater a lot. That year my friends and I were heavily involved with the program. It was one of my favorite years. I left the festival with new invigoration. I wanted to take my own students again. I wanted students to be as excited as the event and the content as I had been for (at that point) ten years. When I returned to the church school in Houston (where only 10 kids out of the whole school wanted to participate at all) I knew what I wanted to pray for.

The festival was in February, which is early hiring season. When I came home, I prayed for God to give me a school that 1) needed me in ways other schools didn’t and 2) had kids that had a desire to sing. There were more items on an ideal list, like teaching band and hand bells, maybe some strings here and there, but those two were the big ones. When March came around, I got a call to interview in California. The school was perfect: it was K-10, included band, choir, and hand bells, and was two hours away from Bob if I needed a friend. The people were really nice and agreed that if I was hired, they would pay for my teaching certification and I could get started that summer. Not only was this basically my dream job, I felt confident that this was my big shot…so you can imagine my disappointment when I did not get the job in the end. Of course, if you’ve read my blog for a while, you might have already known I didn’t get it.

When I was interviewing in California I started getting texts from a close friend that lived near Tulsa, Oklahoma. He said the school there had recently lost a music teacher and needed one for the upcoming school year. I had replied that I had a good prospect and I wasn’t interested. When it all fell apart, I felt once again that maybe God didn’t want me to be a teacher after all. I wasn’t cut out for the real world of music teaching. I got a text from my friend’s brother-in-law, who was the math teacher at the school and–incidentally–had also been one of my percussionists in my first year of college wind symphony. I first said I wasn’t interested again, but after realizing I was running out of money (and living with my siblings was rough, as you might also have read before in my blog), I agreed to speak with the principal. It all happened so fast. I had an interview that very day, but I was disappointed to hear the job would only be part-time and with full-time responsibilities. However, the principal insisted that the job could be approved for full time by the time school started, and if not, he was fairly certain the spring semester. The school said they were desperate to find someone that could be flexible with their arrangement–someone who had taught choir before, especially high school students, had experience with the younger kids (that I had from my church ministry), could lead praise team chapel once a week, and could live off a small amount of money for the time being. I agreed to visit the school before they officially hired me (although I found out later that the staff thought I was already a done deal). I liked what I saw, for the most part. It was less than a day’s drive to my mom’s (she now lived in Tyler, TX). It was half a day drive to Dallas. My close friend that had the connection to begin with and his wife lived an hour away, and, unlike the California school, much of the staff were millennials, as I am. The thing that really sealed it for me was that so many of the staff told me while I was there, “Our kids really just want to be able to sing again.”

And that’s how I moved to Tulsa. Like East Texas, I could write a whole blog post. There were a lot of good things, and I’d even say that the good outweighed the bad. I used the lessons I’d learned from East Texas to start off on a stronger foot with my students. Not that it was easy. I had no idea what kind of situation I’d walked into. The previous music teacher had been fired for emotionally and verbally abusing and manipulating students. She had been married to the principal, and there was a lot of shady stuff with money there. They had left in February that year, only a week before Math Teacher saw me at music fest and found out I needed a job. The new principal was the one that hired me, but neither of us knew how tough it would be to earn the trust of the traumatized students.

Still, by Christmas I felt as if I’d found my people. I found a “groove” early on. Aside from troublesome students and/or parents, I had few complaints. My first year I taught four elementary music classes, a junior high choir, high school choir, and high school government. The elementary classes were half block, so they met for only thirty minutes. My official load was only five classes of teaching, and six is full time. It took a while to learn the names of my 100+ students, but I found good friends among the other teachers. We had good praise teams for chapel once a week. I produced a large-scale program at Christmas that first year. We had a smaller spring program, but equally as successful. I felt I was more than earning my meager salary, and I thought I had proven that I deserved to be sent to full-time, as the principal had promised.

However, when rehiring season came, I was stunned to learn that I had not been rehired by the board. However, I later found out (always later with Tulsa, because honesty apparently is a weakness) that the vote was unofficial because they had taken it by email (and hiring votes are supposed to be in-person board meetings) in which only four out of the required six had replied at all. I heard two different versions: the first was that the board had decided not to fund my position for the next year. The second was that there had been classroom management complaints. I knew there were management complaints, but I had been dealing with them all year, and my principal nor the teacher he had assigned to “mentor” me had not once observed my classes. The whole thing felt very unfair, and more like excuses to get rid of the measly amount of money the school spent on me. I spent three weeks very angry and upset. I really loved my school and my job. I loved my coworkers. I knew I’d never get such a perfect fit again. When my principal felt guilty enough to retract the vote (that’s when I found out it was never “official” to begin with) I was so angry that I had half a mind to leave out of spite. Not to mention that this was now the third semester in a row that I’d been “promised” a promotion to full-time pay, and there was no sign of it anywhere.

But I decided to stay. I still had the “potential” to get promoted to full time, and I couldn’t bare the idea of starting over somewhere else after I had finally figured out my own style with these kids.

My second year at Tulsa was even better than the first. I already knew the students, making me twice as prepared as a first year teacher. I had made plans for the classes all summer. I got to teach American history, which I really enjoyed, and I started a ukulele program with upper elementary and middle school. All of my elementary classes were adjusted to be full class time, and I picked up upperclassman religion. However, I had only gotten a $50 per month raise to now teach nine full-time classes, and I was soon in a battle over things like hours and pay–a battle that I was told could be a lawsuit, if I really wanted it to be. Long story short, there were a lot of hours I worked that I never logged under direction of my boss, because the school “couldn’t afford” to pay me the full time. He again promised me an eventual pay raise. By then I knew it was an empty thing he just said to keep me around. I had already watched him give away a granted position to someone else (although it fell through for her so at that point I was happy not to be the recipient). I had seen the school spend 300k on a curb appeal makeover, but still refused to spend more than 18k a year on my salary. Tulsa has lower costs of living, but not that low. My mom was paying three of my bills. Sometimes I was almost late on rent because the school screwed up my paycheck by trying to cut corners. I was the only teacher getting paid half pay for teaching nine classes. My savings were sucked dry by any little thing that came up. I was out of money and out of options. When the school board declined to up me to full time for my third year, I declined their offer to return.

It broke my heart when I decided to leave Tulsa. I loved my kids and my coworkers. I even liked my boss–generally–despite his lack of awareness of the situation he had put me in. I was finally building a program and making it mine. I hate to tell people that I left because of money. I think they get the impression that I was making 30k and wanted 50. The truth is that I would have been happy to stay for 25. I finished my teaching cert at their expense, but I refused to sign another contract because I knew the next year would be more classes, less money, and more fighting. I told my boss in March. I started telling my coworkers in April. I told a close-knit group of my oldest students around that time.

I started interviewing again (counting my three weeks of job-hunting the previous year, this was now my fifth hiring season). My resume looked better than ever. I had better references. Better experience. Teaching certification, and three years of experience: everything anyone wants in a good hire. By now, I had a new list of things I wanted: 1) to finally teach band, because I still hadn’t done that. 2) to teach history or other social studies in addition to music. 3) get paid full salary. Like before, I had smaller things that went with that–hand bells, maybe ukulele, praise team–but those were the big three. I got a call from another school in California for an interview. We initially met on zoom, and I felt the interview didn’t go well. They didn’t seem impressed with me. I was overjoyed when they invited me for an in-person interview. I didn’t tell my students that I was leaving town: instead, I told them I had a personal day. I only missed two days of school. They had no idea I flew to the other side of the country and back. That school was also K-12, and while it didn’t have social studies included, it had band, choir, orchestra, and was a full-time position. The church was lovely and I even knew people there *insert small world theme music here*. This school was a lot closer to Bob, so I met with him for an afternoon and we got to hang out for the first time in a year, talking about how cool it would be if we could work with one another being so close.

The school itself was everything I wanted in the next chapter of my life. They valued music academically and believed in more than just performance. Their teacher was quitting to raise a family, so there was no drama there. I also felt confident about my abilities with this school. I taught a band class while I was there, and received positive feedback from the principal, teacher, and kids. I also taught an elementary class with the same results. I was terrified to hope for the best, but the longer I was there, the more I thought my time had come and my years of paying dues were over.

It’s crazy to look back and now and see that I was at the top of my music game only months before I walked away from it completely. Again, previous blog posts might have spoiled the outcome of this interview for you. I thought I was on the verge of the greatest thing that ever happened to me.

And while the outcome is not what I expected, I assure you that I was not wrong. In fact, this was all leading to a defining moment in my life.

I went to Tulsa and had a great two years, but came across a lot of problems with my personal relationship with music. The academics, the parents, etc.

New job interview, also falls through. I knew I had to talk to my kids.

When I left Tulsa, that’s when it fell apart and I really had to reevaluate my plans. Spent the next year at home with my mom, but realized I didn’t want to teach music in public school.

2020 hit. The pandemic changed a lot of things about me, but the biggest thing it did was unravel my identity.

Identity in music.

Why I Left Music: Part One

Music is one of those things, you know? It connects to all of us in some way, shape, or form. It is a pillar of civilization. It is an identifier of culture. It exists in every language and is, in fact, a language of it’s own with many different dialects. Everyone has a relation to music. Even the deaf experience music through vibration, dance, and flowing, expressive sign language. It’s one of the most complex and intricate sciences, and one of the most respected and disciplined arts.

When I tell you that I’ve “left music”, I’m not saying that I’ve stopped listening to it. I’m not saying that I hear a song come on the radio and immediately turn it off. I’m not saying that any mention of a musical instrument causes me to break out in hives, or the sound of someone singing causes me anguish. I’m not writing this to tell you not to play the piano or guitar. I don’t want you to put down your drumsticks. I don’t want you to quit your church choir.

What I mean is, I used to be “a musician”.

I was a musical child. Now, you may have been or have known a musical child. They start instrument lessons at an early age. They play in recitals. They play for churches. Maybe they play a quick song for a family reunion. Perhaps a talent show here and there…

I was a band geek into high school, but my particular high school band experience was a step back from what I had been performing during my home schooled years. It did bring it’s own challenges when my band director asked me to take up the timpani. I had never considered timpani up until that point, but my never-ending desire to feel needed took over and I agreed. I found a purpose with timpani that I didn’t have with mallet percussion. The mallets have a certain level of skill, but I found I excelled far beyond with the challenge that the kettle drums presented. I took great pride in my newfound talent and ownership of the instruments that, while I never personally owned, became a part of my very soul. When I graduated high school, I knew music was going to be my thing.

Most of this first portion of the story is dedicated to my college experience: a foundation I thought would be the pillars of my career. Instead, it was a whole new world for which I was in no way prepared. Because my small Christian college relied on majors to fund their professors’ salaries, most of the departments and programs accepted pretty much anyone that declared their major. The academic bulletin had a list of requirements for entry to the music program. I had prepared for keyboard proficiency and basic music theory as I had learned to do from reading the program description, only to never be given the test. Instead, the professors expected me to perform a solo piece. I had never had a formal timpani or symphonic percussion instructor to give me solo repertoire. My Advisor (not a percussionist) gave me a piece that he thought I could sight-read on marimba with one of the older flute majors for the very first “masterclass”– actually, it was more of a pre-recital, and not a traditional masterclass, so I’ll call it what it is– “pre-recital” of the school year, where we played our pieces for the department (both professors and majors) one week before we would play for the public.

There wasn’t a factor leading up to the pre-recital performance that didn’t seem sabotaged. First, my part in the piece was in bass clef and written for bassoon. I can read the clef for timpani and piano, and in theory marimba shouldn’t be different. However, marimba is generally played in treble clef, and because of that (and I don’t know if it’s an actual psychological excuse or if it’s just a personal problem) Advisor was essentially asking me to relearn the clef while learning an unfamiliar piece. To make matters worse, the flutist had her own stuff going on and kept putting off our practices to the point where we never practiced together. She and I prepared the piece at drastically different tempos and I still hadn’t completely relearned bass clef by the time it was our turn to perform for the professors. I told her that I didn’t feel ready, and she shrugged it off. As an upperclassman, she was used to dealing with far more experienced musicians that were able to show up and do things on the spot. In hindsight, I should have been that advanced even as an incoming freshman.

The performance was a disaster. I highly doubt it even qualifies as a performance. The flutist counted us off, but we were out of sync before the second measure. I swallowed my fears and tried to press on, but four measures in and she stopped us and said, “What are you doing?” I told her where I thought we were, and she told me where she thought we were. The professors were upset with us, but even though I could have argued that the flutist’s lack of professionalism had contributed to the disaster, it was clear they placed most of the blame on me. They dismissed her without a single critique and then didn’t hold back with their disappointment in my playing. I was humiliated in front of the entire department. Even though I was an excellent percussionist in the wind symphony, had I shown no solo talent or potential. They had been expecting something more.

That night, less than two weeks into college, set a precedence for the next four years. I was pretty average in the standard music classes (such as music theories and ear training and sight singing) and even had superior expertise with percussion in the wind symphony. But in recitals and solo-related content, it was obvious from the beginning that I was the bottom of the talent pool. I didn’t have a percussion instructor, so my Advisor (who is actually a clarinetist with brass as his secondary area and also the Wind Symphony director) had me learning snare drum techniques–techniques any incoming percussion major should have known. It wasn’t my first experience with snare, so I learned the rudiments quickly. But since I wasn’t practicing anything else besides marimba scales and had no real repertoire, I performed the snare techniques in my required recitals. I played several with little snare etudes that were written at a high school level. One of the older majors played bass drum to “fill it in”. I received verbal praise and the worst anyone said was “Well, that was different“, but I always felt like my snare performances were a joke. I hated them. They were there to fulfill a requirement. There was nothing musical or even academic about them. I didn’t have a percussion instructor to assign me anything of real substance, and I didn’t have the self drive to overcompensate by doing my own research. I did dig up “Under the Sea” from the Little Mermaid and learned to play it on marimba for a single recital, but with no piano accompaniment, it sounded elementary and I was never fully satisfied…and, since I’m being completely honest, I also thought it turned into a joke. I tried to laugh it off with everyone else, but I knew my credibility as a musician would not be easy to redeem.

My sophomore year is when it really went off the rails. I finished my hated snare drum requirements and moved on to timpani etudes. They were a little more interesting than the snare stuff, but not at all the type of music our usual recital audience was expecting. I often had disagreements with my Advisor in my percussion lessons over timing and entrances, a habit that ended up transferring into my ensemble life. After several weeks, I realized that there wasn’t a wind symphony rehearsal that went by where I was not openly criticized in front of the entire wind symphony. I did my best to improve, but nothing seemed to help. It all came to a head right after my midterm exams that fall.

A little backstory might be required here. When I was in high school and attended the college-level recruiting events (music festivals mostly) I met this kid named…oh, let’s call him Chad. Chad and I were the same class but at different feeder schools, and we both knew we were going to major in music with our primary emphasis on percussion. However, when fall of 2011 came, he went to a different college to pursue a double major in music and something else like pre-med. (I don’t really know, I don’t keep up with the guy.) In high school, he basically did everything better than me except for the mallet instruments, which had been my forte. I had a suspicion I was better at timpani, but I never got the chance to really evaluate that suspicion. Well, like I said, he didn’t come to our school and I ended up being the only percussion major of that generation. I thought I wouldn’t have to worry about the competition. Full disclosure, much of my freshman year I thanked God that we weren’t at the same school for comparison. Much of my underclassman years I was convinced that they would have asked me to leave the program if they hadn’t needed a primary percussionist in their ensembles or even just for department demographics. I would’ve never experienced the grace I did if Chad was around.

So we went on tour to this feeder school–Chad’s alma mater. I didn’t expect to see him at all since he was supposed to be at our sister school across the country. I was annoyed that we couldn’t take our own timpani because of space (and really, you shouldn’t be traveling all over Texas with timpani anyway) but was assured their timpani there would be in good order. I was not surprised but was highly disappointed to find that the provided timpani had not been used, tuned, or maintained since Chad graduated a year and a half before. The music teacher had also lost the drum key and so the timpani were in terrible shape, terrible tune, and, by extension, played terrible. During our performance rehearsal (not the clinic with the feeder kids) the director, my Advisor, got upset and lectured me in front of the entire group (but what else was new) and all I had for him were excuses. His solution was to treat the timpani– pitched instruments–like the bass drum. He didn’t seem to understand that his solution was only making my performance even more terrible, no matter how hard I tried to overcompensate for the disaster the instruments were in (and I did try, I just decided to spare you all the technical solutions and their jargon).

When it came time to do our clinic with the high schoolers, Chad walked in. (Like I said, I don’t keep up with the guy so I’m not sure why he was home instead of at college) and greeted the director like they were old buddies. I didn’t think much of it other than “oh, great, it’s Chad”. But then, not ten minutes later, in the middle of a clinic, did he stop the entire group from the middle of a song, criticize my playing, and then said, “Let Chad do it”.

The ensemble continued without me for the rest of the clinic. There was nothing for me to do. My other percussionists had their jobs, and the high school mallet percussionist was already quite proficient and is actually to this day an amazing musician in all aspects, so there wasn’t much for me to do except sit around and feel sorry for myself. I asked my friends, some of whom were older members of the group, if my playing was really that bad? Was I really that off? Unfortunately, the only answers I got were all along the lines of, “I just can’t tell from where I sit.”

That day I realized that my advisor had also been expecting to have two incoming music majors in 2011, and that he was disappointed when the one that actually showed up was me instead of Chad. I watched Chad play the timps with the same limitations I had moments before, and Advisor praised his playing instead of criticizing it, even though I saw little if any difference in the final product. The realization was then solidified in my brain that I was a disappointment from the beginning, and I could never be “Chad” to my director–or even the other professors. It was a crushing revelation.

I guess I should acknowledge that the superiority Chad comes by innocently doesn’t make him a bad person. Or I could just tell you that I rolled my eyes when I did some Facebook stalking to discover that he’s a doctor now.

My dad unexpectedly passed away between the semesters my sophomore year, and my grandfather six weeks after that. I never wanted their deaths to give me any sort of allowances or short cuts. I went back to school immediately. I missed a few days for the memorials and funerals, and all the stress boiled up until my immune system crashed and I vomited all over our loading dock floor right before a concert (true story, also disgusting) and also got a bad case of bronchitis that lasted the entire last quarter of the semester. However, I powered through it all and my life continued as usual. My Advisor was sympathetic much of the time, especially in classes outside of the ensemble. I still got in trouble in wind symphony, and several times I was not at fault. (For example, my bass drum player forgot her mallets for a performance, leading me to be lectured in front of the entire group while she wasn’t even scolded for tardiness. His reasoning was that I was principal percussionist and the equipment was my responsibility, even thought by his own standards it wasn’t true). And I have to say this: while being tough on a musician can make them strive for perfection (and I did, if for no other reason than to get my Advisor off my back) it honestly came to a point where I never knew if I was the problem or just a habit he had created.

A redemption of my sophomore year was Dr. E. He was brought into the department to build a string orchestra program and teach our upper division music classes. I hardly ever saw him outside of department meetings that first year. He asked me to do a few orchestra concerts and gave me a few instructions for orchestral playing and context and things like that–things that percussion majors (especially timpanists) at any major university would have learned in their first year. But not me. By my fourth semester of college, I was barely treading water without any instruction and no idea what the real world of percussion was like, and I’m ashamed to say I didn’t even have the motivation to find out on my own. The professors were letting me just do my own thing, and my advisor (while supposedly reaching out to people to find me a “real” teacher) seemed to have higher priorities. Even though Dr. E didn’t give me private lessons, I quickly realized that he was giving me opportunities to grow as a musician any little way he could.

My junior year I played with the orchestra a day or two a week instead of for an occasional performance, and Dr. E was also the professor for two of my upper division classes. Now, it’s not like he ever got upset with me or my classmates. In fact, we upset him a lot that fall semester of 2013. But when he got upset, I always understood why. When he criticized me in orchestra, I never doubted that I was wrong and I knew exactly how to fix it. In fact, he fixed many of the problems I had in Wind Symphony by changing the way he explained something, but–even more importantly–by admitting that the director isn’t always right.

Don’t get me wrong, the director is always right. That is the number #1 rule of ensembles. Rule #2 is that if the director happens to be wrong, see Rule #1. However, one of the biggest criticisms I got in wind symphony would be my timing and dragging or rushing rhythms. The director (my Advisor) always said the same thing, “You’re not watching!” I was many times convinced his conducting was off. I would stare the heck out of his baton and try to synchronize my movements to his, but if there was so much as a twitch (from me or him) he would stop everything and call me out. I could never say anything (although I did and then lived to regret it) because, you know, Rule #1. My stomach was already in knots the first time it happened with Dr. E. But instead of accusing me of not watching, he instead told me, “Hear the tempo, keep the tempo. You’re the conductor now. I’m working on cuing sections and marking the measure, the orchestra is following you.” That’s all he said. I had been missing an important component of ensemble playing with my hyper-focus on following the conductor, but those words cured me instantly. I never lagged or rushed again in his orchestra or in wind symphony ever again. He didn’t expect me to watch his every movement because he expected me to hold my own as the backbone of the orchestra, as opposed to the other director that expected me to stare at his hand until my eyes fell out. Dr. E’s instruction really taught me my place as a timpanist in any given ensemble and gave me a confidence that I didn’t have my first two years as a music major.

Partially because of Dr. E and his (what I thought were) revolutionary instructions, I began to climb back up a ladder of respect my junior year. The trumpet section (which contained no majors or minors and had been left without leadership after their principle dropped out) got the brunt of the criticisms that year. The few times I was openly criticized and it wasn’t my fault (and again, it’s not like there weren’t times that it was and I knew it) I had the gumption to stand up for myself. I had some allies in the group that would speak up for me as well. One of my percussionists was a violin major, and he was known for having near-perfect pitch and exceptional sight reading skills within the department. On one occasion, the director disagreed with my reading of a specific rhythm several times. My reading of the rhythm never changed, and I had to show it to the violin major and get his shared opinion before the director would take me seriously. After instances like this happened a few times, I noticed that my criticisms became few and far between.

My relationship with Advisor improved further when he was no longer my private lesson instructor. I was now learning from a local high school teacher who had majored in percussion in his undergrad. He wasn’t the “professional” that my advisor had promised, but in my first couple of months with Mr. W, I already learned more than I had from two years with Advisor. He introduced me to the world of solo percussion repertoire. He was chill and understanding of my issues, and even found time to research any questions I asked him (which, after teaching music myself, I’m extra appreciative of the time he took to help me progress to the level I needed to be). He knew I wasn’t at par, but he also seemed to recognize that I wasn’t completely at fault, and he did his best to catch me up. I finally felt like I was getting the instruction I really needed, the instruction that every other major in the department had from their freshman year. I practiced with excitement knowing that I wouldn’t be a joke anymore.

But that’s when a whole new chapter of failures began.

Here’s an instance: my junior year we had a scheduled recital in October, as we did every month. Because of the deaths in my family, as well as the complete lack of repertoire from my advisor, I had missed out on almost all recitals my fourth semester. It had become somewhat of a running joke that I was the only major allowed to miss them. Now that I was in my fifth semester and practicing as an upper classman with new vigor, finally learning my craft, I had waited until I thought my song was ready before showing up for pre-recital. My teacher was supportive of me but couldn’t come to the screening performance. It went well, from what I remember. I didn’t get any criticisms or a private talk after. I had positive feedback. I felt ready to perform. The recital was going to be instrumentalists only since it would be while the choir was on tour. I didn’t see a reason for them to keep me out of it.

The day before the recital, the department had an outing to the opera. We were scheduled to leave right after wind symphony. The majority of our majors were in the ensemble, and since choir wouldn’t leave until the next day, the vocalists that overlapped were still around. During beginning announcements, the director (still my Advisor) promoted the recital. He started naming off the participants present–a couple of pianists, a saxophone major, a flutist, etc. Two of my best friends sat in the front row and constantly said my name to remind him, and eventually all the participants were like “What about Ann?” and then, he said, “Oh, Ann won’t be performing tomorrow, she’ll be doing it next month.” Understandably, I cried, “What?” and, in front of the entire ensemble, I was told that I had not made the cut. The rest of the class I could barely concentrate, I was so livid. I had worked so hard, and it clearly meant nothing. I ranted to my friends all the way to Dallas and back. I was in such a sour mood that I even snapped at the department chair when he asked me to switch vans. Looking back, I’m sure he realized why I was really upset, because he didn’t push it. (By the way, I’m sorry about that, if you’re reading this.)

Advisor was embarrassed about it and apologized for the awkward way I found out later, blaming Dr. E for not talking to me (which isn’t Dr. E’s job, it’s my Advisor’s) but I never found out why they took me out, or who had the final say. It won’t surprise you to know that the November recital also didn’t include me, since it was vocal only. I played in one recital my junior year, and it was many months later. I did have a solo performance with orchestra accompaniment late in the year, the closest I came to a featured performance (again, Dr. E doing his best to give me a rounded education).

Now that I was nearing the end of my college career, I focused more on my methods classes (music education, essentially) and building my ensemble leadership. My junior and senior year I had a solid group of percussionists, and we even had featured pieces in our annual festival, traditionally our biggest audience. A few years in a row, I had a large part in the leadership of the percussion ensemble pieces, although it often went unrecognized. I still considered our group performances a personal accomplishment, and I had a good relationship with the people I worked with.

My emphasis on group and ensemble work combined with my lack of solo performance to contribute to a condition known as performance anxiety: in the vernacular, stage fright. I had always been nervous for auditions or featured moments (and as the university’s only timpanist, I had plenty of those). But when it came to solo performances, I realized that I was incapable of performing on the same level that I practiced. I continued to fail pre-recital performances and was only in one recital my senior year– my own senior recital.

To this day, I consider my senior recital to be my biggest personal failure. It wasn’t as dramatic a failure as that screw-up two weeks into college four years before. Most of the audience wasn’t informed enough to understand the level of mistakes I made. Even worse: the most difficult piece of my recital was only junior-level repertoire. My audience didn’t know it, but I was drowning in shame over every mistake because it should have been easy. And the truth is that only a few days before my recital, I could play every piece perfectly. My accompanists can even tell you so. But I knew before I ever got out on stage that it was all going to go to hell. And it did. I blanked on a piece I practiced for two years and had performed memorized twice before. I missed a vital note at the end of a marimba cadence. I had a pivotal timpani cadenza that I switched the sticking, and the climatic visual was lost. The two ensemble pieces at the end, which I had prepared and directed myself, were the only pieces that went well at all. The next day I parked on the far side of my dormitory parking lot and cried for an hour. All of that hard work and four years of waiting for an opportunity to prove myself had meant nothing.

And so, in spite of all the progress I thought I’d made, my colligate career ended with a failure that haunts me to this day. My professors were nice to me about it. The project even got an A. But on the inside, I felt it was because they knew it didn’t really matter. I was going to be a teacher, and not a professional musician. In a way, the recital felt like a poetic end to the struggle I had in my education.

To be clear, I have a lot of great memories from college. In fact, for a long time I considered those years to be the happiest of my life. Music wasn’t only a part of my life back then: it was my life. I spent two hours in tears after my graduation because I thought I’d never play timpani again (although I did for several years after, I have not since spring of 2019). I spent the next five years looking back fondly on the memories I shared with my friends, both in and out of the music department.

I was really convinced that it would all come together when I stepped foot into the real world, but alas, as you will read in Part Two, consequences did not improve from there.

The Post-Christmas Blues

I’m sure everyone gets this same feeling. At least, anyone that celebrates Christmas. But it’s the same after any celebratory event, isn’t it? We spend days or weeks or months getting all hyped up. We over plan, we over shop, we over party, and we over eat! And then…it’s over. This year I hardly felt the hype at all. Sure, I went to COVID-regulation safe parties. I did the shopping. I ate until I was sick. I listened to the music. I watched a few movies. Yet, I still feel like Christmas was…lacking. It’s as if it didn’t come at all this year.

I guess I could blame the year 2020. We normally kick off the holiday season with a Thanksgiving Feast with our neighbors, followed by games and then a Black Friday shopping spree and a late movie showing. We still had dinner with our friends (who have basically been our quarantine bubble buddies). However, the rest of the festivities were set aside. Our Thanksgiving Day, which normally ends at midnight or 1 in the morning, ended around 7. This was the beginning of a lack of holiday traditions. There was no church Christmas party. There was no school holiday program. Community programs that have gone on for decades were “postponed until 2021”.

However, my family has never been one for “traditions”. Aside from Thanksgiving, which has been an on-going thing for about ten years, the other things I mentioned above only get attended once in a while. So, after I ruled the cancellations out as the source of my lack of Christmas cheer, I turned to what else might be lacking in my life.

If you’ve read my blog before, you might know that I used to be a teacher: K-12 Music and High School Social Studies. While I’ve walked away from teaching full time, I have many fond memories of my teaching experience that revolve around Christmastime. This year, I didn’t start rehearsing Christmas music in September. I didn’t have students help me decorate an office or even a hallway. I didn’t have students shower me in an overabundance of teacher mugs, chocolate, and Starbucks gift cards. Even last year, when I was substitute teaching, I participated in ugly sweater contests and wished kids “Merry Christmas!” and “Happy Holidays!” as they dashed out of their first semester finals. I even put volunteer work into the school program where my mom was the principal. However, this semester I didn’t sub and my mom retired this summer. We didn’t have any of those school-related festivities.

A few years back we tried to start a tradition of opening presents with the entire family whenever we could be together, although it usually isn’t on Christmas Day. Normally it’s a little later. This year, however, my younger brother and his wife went to visit her family for two weeks, so we had it the earliest we ever have, on the 19th. It was actually a nice time. We watched the new Netflix movie Klaus (highly recommended, by the way) and opened our presents, had a big family brunch, and played a couple of games. But then, Christmas was…over. Was my pre-Christmas celebration really just a backfire that seemed to cancel Christmas out all together? I didn’t think so…we did have a nice time. However, aside from the presents, it didn’t feel much different than any other time they come to visit.

So, I began to look deeper–or actually, shallower. Was it my presents? In my adult years, I’ve become quite a gift-giver. I start the Christmas wish lists every year so I can plan all my gift-giving ahead. My mom and I did stocking stuffer shopping together, and then I did a run on my own. In addition to buying from the list or collective stocking stuffer shopping, I hand-make something for everyone. This year, I made personalized, flannel blankets. I don’t expect everyone to hand-make stuff in return or anything. I know it’s cheesy to say, but I really do get more out of giving than I do out of receiving. But this year, I’m ashamed to say, I felt ungrateful for what I received. I didn’t ask for much, and I got most items on my wish list. It’s the things I didn’t ask for that threw me off, since a few of the items were a bit unpractical and are proving to be more of an obstacle than a thoughtful token. Besides, there’s just something about pouring out your stocking and seeing that everything in it was purchased by you…

However, this is also not unusual (although the stocking stuffer thing was a first for me, I understand that’s what normal “mom” life is like). Actually, this year’s gift-giving experience was probably even better than last year and the year before. On a superficial level, I did get everything on my list that wasn’t a gift card. And I think everyone was happier with the blankets than they were with my handmade gifts in the past. So, if the presents weren’t the issue, then what was it?

My older brother made the comment that we have holiday movies that we didn’t watch this year. Growing up, we couldn’t get through a season without A Christmas Story, The Muppet Christmas Carol, or a Santa Clause marathon. This year, we didn’t see any one of those movies. I do enjoy the Muppets, and I don’t mind the Tim Allen films. I do think I’ve seen enough of “You’ll shoot your eye out!” to sustain me for many, many lifetimes. However, especially since I don’t live alone anymore, it’s difficult for me to sit through an entire movie that I’ve already seen. My mother has a terrible memory, so she can watch the same movie every two or three months and still think she hasn’t seen it before. I think my older brother watches movies with the specific intention of memorizing every single line. I just get bored with most movies. Even movies I really like I’ll just turn on in the background while I clean or paint or do something else to really occupy my mind. This year we played Christmas with the Kranks as we decorated the tree, and that’s about my limit for “sitting” to watch a movie. My favorite way to just “watch a movie” is with friends that don’t mind if we chat about what’s happening. My family, especially my brother, cannot stand when people chat through movies. He even gets upset if somebody is on their phone while the television is on. So, he and my mom will often watch movies without me. This year they watched Elf and It’s a Wonderful Life, but even they didn’t sit to watch the family classics.

Even though we didn’t see them, the movie theory doesn’t pan out. Movies have never been the defining “Christmas Spirit” for me. What is defining, however, is Christmas music. This year, I couldn’t bring myself to listen to Christmas music more than three or four days total. Maybe on a quick trip to the grocery would I have some playing in the background. But other than that…I just wasn’t feeling it. I have always loved Christmas music–not so much “Frosty the Snowman” or “Winter Wonderland”–but the sacred pieces have that double meaning that forever gives Christians hope. That double meaning of course, is that Christ came once and will come again. It’s always seemed to be so much more meaningful at Christmastime. Except, this year, I just didn’t want to listen to it.

In fact, this brings me to my final supposition. This is the very first Christmas that I had no plans for the next year. It’s always been “next year, I’ll have a job” or “next year, I’ll have my own place” or “next year, I’ll be hired full time”. “Next year” this and “next year” that. Not this year. I have no expectation that things in 2021 will be any different than they’ve been in 2020. I spent the majority of the year unemployed and don’t even have a real direction on what kind of career I really want. I had to get rid of half my stuff to move back into a house I hoped I would never live in again. I feel like the only things I’ve looked forward to have been cancelled or postponed because of the pandemic. When people say, “next year”, I really have no idea what that will hold for me. I don’t have a “thrill of hope” as the song says. I really expect to be living in this same house, in this same room, with a perpetual state of temporary work until “something better” comes along.

I think the real lack of Christmas cheer for me is not joy or peace, because I really have everything I need and I think I have a good life. I know that’s more than some people can say. However, I do think I have little to no hope of my life improving in the next year. It would be nice to say, “next year, I’ll have a job and my own place” but the truth of 2020 is that those things are not guaranteed, no matter how many steps I take in the right direction.

I didn’t write this post to discourage myself (**I type as I wipe tears away**) but I know that it’s 2020. Perhaps you’ve been feeling a general lack of hope. Maybe you even feel a little guilty because you know other people have lost so much more than you have. But it’s okay to feel a little sad sometimes. The important thing is to pick yourself up and keep going. Maybe my circumstances during Christmas 2021 will be the same, but there’s no way that I will be the same. That’s part of “keep on keeping on”, is that you don’t stay in the same “place”, even if you don’t know where you’re going.

Let’s keep keeping on together.

PS: Listen to “Christmas Lights” by Straight No Chaser. You’ll get the whole vibe.