I’ve done my best to keep my blog as a lighter, professional window into my experiences over the past year or so, but I’m running out of the energy required to put on that sort of unfailingly optimistic façade. Apologies in advance...
Since first going to university eight years ago, I’ve been lucky to have secured a handful of really wonderful jobs and appointments, all of which lasted between 10 months and two years. I’ve known my most recent appointment as Organ Scholar at Peterborough would also fall into this category, and that, following its conclusion, I would need to find something more permanent. And this has proven true - I am so eager to settle into a job, make a home somewhere and finally get a respite from that annoying routine of moving house every year! Also, I feel ready to get stuck in to my first ‘real’ adult job - perhaps one in which I am in charge rather than just assisting. Imposter syndrome aside, I know deep down that my CV is strong, that I’ve experienced and observed and learned from music programs of all shapes and sizes, and that I have accumulated useful ideas and talents to share with a church or cathedral. I would so desperately like a chance to prove this to others and myself.
Unfortunately, the past 10 months have just felt like a rollercoaster of many lows and not enough highs. Here’s the routine: a job opportunity that seems *perfect* arises, I apply, I get shortlisted!, but then, I am not what they’re looking for, over and over. I know this is far from a unique experience, all the less so during a pandemic. Cumulatively, the emotional whiplash is exhausting.
Perhaps this will always be a saturated market and uphill battle; there is so much that comes down to good timing or luck. Perhaps my parents knew that when they initially urged me not to put all my eggs in the music basket, but to get a safer liberal arts degree as a back-up (they came around eventually and have always been thoroughly supportive of my musical career). It’s never been about the money for me - I do need to pay off my loans but don’t give a damn how big my salary is, as long as the bills can be paid and the cat can get fed (and me too, preferably). I really don’t want to start over and get some lucrative tech or business degree and cast off my niche passions.
Part of the trouble here is that it’s hard to gauge how much of this is just your normal edge-of-adulthood anxiety, how much is due to bad luck or timing, how much is thanks to COVID, how much is thanks to the inevitable “death of the church” (hopefully NOT this, at all), how much is due to my personal deficiencies (logically I don’t think very much but who knows)... that’s a long list, isn’t it?
As my UK visa nears its dying day in just over a week, I dread returning to my screwed up home country, where for the first time I won’t have anything exciting guaranteed on the horizon. How fun, a transition period at home with no end in sight. It no longer seems a very pleasant purgatory, but more like one where my skills might begin to deteriorate, not to mention my motivation and self-confidence. I will try my hardest to stay occupied with healthy activities and try to keep making music somehow (must find access to an organ!), but I’m worried that I won’t be strong enough to last very long before my soul succumbs to starvation. Ok, this is getting a bit too dramatic now, ffs.
Everything will be fine, I deserve success, I just need to be patient. Stop whining, everyone else is having just as hard if not harder a time. It could always be worse. Eat your vegetables, practice your scales, go outside for 30 minutes every day. Don’t get trapped into that double-edged sword of living vicariously through your colleagues on social media who do seem to be living their dreams; I’m sure they have their own struggles too. Keep refreshing your various job board tabs. More than once a day is probably a bit excessive. Hang in there. It will all work out. Or, we might all die in the floods and/or riots. But then you won’t have to pay off your student loans!
I’m just trying to put my thoughts together here - not necessarily fishing for compliments nor care reacts - thanks for reading.
A pensive moment just before lockdown began in Peterborough