Finding my voice - Part 1

Do you believe in signs? 

1. I ate dinner at Panera tonight, waiting for choir practice to start.  (I fill in as a pianist for one of my co-workers at her church.)  I was reading "What Works for Women at Work" (highly recommended and will be mentioned in my blog many times, I'm sure), specifically a sub-chapter on "Finding Your Voice" at work.  
2. After I played for the first part of choir practice and was getting ready to leave, the choir director asked me to stay and sing with them.  I apologized and said "You really don't want me to sing.  It would truly and only be a joyful noise."  
3. On the drive home, I heard Katy Perry's "Roar" on the radio. I do admit to singing in the car and that's one of my favorites to sing along to.  I came back through campus because that's the shortest route with the least amount of traffic lights.  I think I scared some of the new freshmen and their parents who are here for Orientation.  Singing in the car is great until you remember you left the windows down.

All signs point towards blogging about finding my voice.

It became very important to me to find my professional voice, especially over the last 16 months.  To find my professional voice, I also had to find my professional confidence.  Confidence is a funny thing.  I've had a lot of friends over the years tell me to "fake it until you make it," but it's hard to fake something that you've never felt.  I've thought to myself many times that I would be much better off if I could only live my life as if I am the person my friends think I am.

The strange thing for me is that I've had confidence as a musician for a very long time, but when did that happen? I can't tell you when it happened precisely, but it feels like it's been there most of my life.  Of course, I started piano lessons at 7 and did my first recital shortly thereafter.  I started playing drums in 6th grade.  (Future blog post: how that came about and the strange connection it had 10 years later.)  In 6th and 7th grade, playing drums in band wasn't hard because we were all new and learning things together.  Plus, I met one of my best friends who also happened to be a girl playing drums, so I wasn't the only one.  It got more difficult when I joined marching band in 8th grade.  I was the only girl in the drum line and as I would come to learn, some drummers are jerks.  Some, not all.   I'm sure you can imagine the stupid, and sometimes vulgar, things that teenage boys can do with drumsticks.  Why put up with that?  Because I was good at it and I got a lot of reinforcement that being a musician was "the thing" that I was good at.

When I got to college, it was very similar to starting 8th grade again.  Back to being the new kid on the block and having to prove that I actually knew what I was doing.  Again, there were jerks, but also there were some really cool guys that I'm still friends with and try to visit fairly often.  It took about 2 years to gain some respect from the jerks and I only knew it then because they started incorporating me into their razzing of the newbies.  (Musicians inside joke.  The guys would point me out to the newbies and say "Man, stay away from her.  She taught drum line for the Cadets.")

When I ended up staying for graduate school, after having the late in my college career revelation that high school teaching wasn't for me, I really wasn't sure what career I might be heading towards.  Possibly a PhD, but very possibly not.  As an MA student in music, you needed to do a thesis or a graduate recital to satisfy degree requirements.  I decided to do both, but I'm not exactly sure how I came to that decision at the time.

My first year of grad school was rough for me, for lots of reasons; I certainly can't say that preparing a thesis and a graduate recital made that any better.  But somehow, I did it.  And after some of the jerks were complimentary about my performance (which they all attended), I remember thinking "I must have finally done it.  I've shown them I could do it." 

Looking back on it, I'm not sure how I did it all.  I had to have the confidence in my abilities as a percussionist to even consider doing a recital on top of a thesis.  And to have my musician's voice, to speak up and say "I'm going to do this."

Over the last 16 months, I've had to find my professional voice and confidence, when I never even thought about it that way.  When I thought confidence, I thought, "Yep, I'm a good musician, but other than that.....?"  How do I take my musician's confidence and voice, and transfer it to other parts of my life?