musesforamonday

[musesforamonday]

the conundrum of a liberal arts degree

Go ahead. Press play on the song I've included above. I promise it's not a mistake. I have included a recording of New Zealand baritone, Teddy Tahu Rhodes, singing the infamous Toreador song from Bizet's Carmen for your listening pleasure and to be the background music for the following blog post.

This is hopefully the first of many weekly Monday posts, my ADHD willing. I have returned to my 2014 One Direction obsessed roots and have come crawling back to the blogging platform of Tumblr to express my thoughts. Mostly because Twitter stresses me out and I have already scared away too many of my Instagram followers.

So why did you choose to make your readers (hopefully there are more of you than just my Mom) listen to opera as they read your chaotic and unorganized thoughts, Maryn? I'll tell you. I graduated with my bachelors degree in music where I focused my studies on opera and musical theatre performance. Not to toot my own horn or anything, but I'm fairly good at what I do and was recognized for my hard work throughout my time as a liberal arts college student. I can sing in four languages, tap dance, analyze 18th century music, and explain to you how Wagnerian opera changed the world and the entertainment industry as we know it. So why the opera? Simply to be pretentious if we're being honest but mostly because I have to have a soundtrack to everything I do and that will now extend to me forcing my readers to live their lives as I do, fully believing that they are the main character and that Bizet orchestrated their lives.

As I laid out in the previous paragraph, I know what I'm talking about and was considered a respected student and performer among my community. Once I graduated I got an incredible performing job (which I still have. It's great, HOWEVER most performing jobs are not full time and do not offer benefits and are not stable. But that could just be on me for wanting to tap dance for a living.) but found myself working a 9 to 5 customer service job to pay the bills. I was terrible at it.

I had visions of working as a florist and being with plants all day (how main character of me) so I took a customer service job in a flower shop. I really loved the people I worked with and it was not a terrible job, but one thing I had failed to realize was that 90% of the work in the floral industry is working in funerals. Customer service for funeral work is not for the faint of heart and ESPECIALLY not for highly sensitive people like myself. I had to make a change when I found myself having to take a walk around the block sobbing my mascara into a dark pool on my cheeks that prompted a rather large and gruff-looking man to yell at me across the street "You okay? You're beautiful, don't let life get you down!"

I was frustrated with myself. I was once one of the most respected lyrical sopranos in my area and here I was, reduced to tears by some woman furious beyond belief over a single Gerber daisy. I voiced my feelings to my friends who are also in the same boat that I'm in, incredibly talented individuals working mundane jobs to pay for their performing careers that may or may not take off. I couldn't help but think of the astonishing vocalists and performers I work with and interact with on the daily and how they are teachers, engineers, and secretaries among many other things. Why do we spend so much of our time honing our craft only to barely use it because it isn't financially lucrative? How do you represent creative people on paper when what we do is emotional and lasts a fleeting two and half hours?

Creative people are problem solvers, empaths, and good at so much more than just singing and dancing, but the problem is we are confined to an 8.5x11 piece of paper that tells indeed.com that we are qualified for jack squat. So that is why I have revived my dormant tumblr blog. To find a creative way to represent myself on paper. (Or in this case, a shoddy html code that I taught myself how to create in high school.) I have a complicated and eccentric personality that takes many a while to get to know and appreciate. Hopefully a weekly post is going to expedite that process. XOXO, future employers. I promise I'm really funny and will find a point to this blog soon.

As we say in the opera world, Toi toi toi!

-Maryn