The How's and Wherefore's...

Rule #2 for this blog: Since taking on this new project, things to write about are rushing about me both day and night, I am going to title my entries according to my inspirator, Mrs. Julie Powell.  It will give me a center and help me focus the day's writing.  Hmmm...hope that doesn't obstruct some kind of copyright precept.  Well, today's title has apostrophes.  Hers does not...::shrug::

So, how will I blaze a trail in the opera world?  In a matter of months???  That is definitely something I can't answer right now.  I'm going to stop trying to answer for the months ahead.  What's best is that I gather all the cliches and quotes like carpe diem, yadah, yadah, yadah...and finally believe in them enough to alter my m.o.  Today, I can make a stride.  What stride?  Stop procrastinating about mapping out my audition plan and write the thing down!!!  Why do we always do this?  We want to do something good, noble, progressive, or just plain fun and we put it off today, off tomorrow, until it's "4-6 months." 

I've never asked my mom if there were things in life she wanted to do, but never did...maybe I should.  I mean, from my eyes, I can say that she's had a great life with the same share of heartache as anyone else.  A plucky childhood with loving parents and close siblings.  Marriage.  Divorce.  Birth of children.  Teaching children.  Adopting a child.  The death of a child.  Losing a husband, a sister, friends...I still remember the day I did the math and realized that she had been a teenage mother.  It was a revelation about her life and why she finished college in her late 30's and a master's degree at 41.  And then it made sense to me why she was so "cautionary" about me ruining my life by being a baby having a baby!  One summer, at 14 years old, I came back from a music arts camp and was welcomed back by grilling about about alleged "trouble" I'd gotten into with boys.  "I'll take you to the abortion clinic," she said.  OMG to the absolute MAX!!!!!!!!!!!!  I certainly believe in at least one immaculate conception, but an immaculate abortion???  I've still not let her live that down...in love, of course.  I asked her a short while ago about what it was like telling her mother about much too soon bundle of joy.  From her account, her mother seemed rather disappointed, but calm...she and the father married.  She finished high school through a home program of some sort.  Her life was altered, but far from ruined...

I talked to my mother yesterday she asked me a question of her own.  She said, "And what about your voice?"  For some reason, I got so sad and even bothered.  Why?  Because all I could tell her is that I'm going to San Francisco next week for yet another lesson with my far away voice teacher...but that's not sad.  It's a good thing, kind of.  No, it is sad because this very well could be my last lesson.  I'm at an impasse where I want to do things that my teacher doesn't agree with, as in summer programs for young artists.  And I think she disagrees to the point of not supporting me in writing recommendation letters and the like.  She says I'm "above" these types of programs and instead I should do her summer institute program once again that for one, does not offer any pay and two, has not gained me ANY exposure.  So, this will be a hard one. 

But as I said up top, I cannot drag myself down with something happening even as little as a week from now.  I will make my map of auditions and competitions I want to do, and the repertoire that goes with each!  That is, wherefore, what I can do TODAY on my trailblazing quest!

Question of the day: What are you putting off for tomorrow what you could be doing today?