Hello! This is the first blog post that I have done for a couple years. I guess I just never had the inclination to sit down and write, or the desire to share my thoughts with the world. I feel a little different about writing recently, however, so here goes.
There are three things that have been buzzing in my brain these last couple weeks that are seemingly unrelated. The first one is that I began taking voice lessons last school year. I remember during my first lesson my teacher told me to sing a scale. I started at middle C, and before long my voice was straining to get the notes out. Instead of singing, my voice was cracking. Not long past the voice-cracking stage, I hit A, and then I found that I could sing a little easier. After I was done singing the scale, my teacher explained that my voice was straining through the switch between chest voice (low notes) and head voice (high notes). While my low notes sounded decent, and my high notes were okay, that middle section was horrible. And it continued to be horrible. I went home, faithfully practiced, researched and practiced some more. My progress was slow. Every song or scale I sang sounded great - until the switch. One day, finally, I grew tired of trying to belt out those notes so perfectly and I relaxed. I sang through those awful middle notes carefully instead of forcefully. Perhaps it was all the previous hard work, or perhaps it was that I had simply accepted that my voice would sound a certain way. I don't know, but though the notes were weak, they were clear.
Now for the second thing. Recently I have been battling the idea that life is overwhelming. See, right now I am juggling my job, my music, family and other personal responsibilities. While I am grateful for all of those things, I regularly find myself walking into a messy house after a crazy day at work - and I almost turn around to walk right out the door again. We are a big family, and right in the stage where some of us are old enough to leave and the other's are still learning how to do life in general.So the house isn't always sparkly clean. Things aren't always orderly. If you were to talk to me on a bad day, I would tell you that the house is never clean or orderly; and yet I know that this stage of life is normal, healthy, and temporary. Why on earth do I react so strongly? While walking home from work, I often feel happy-go-lucky, but as soon as I walk through the front door that cheer is replaced with gloomy thoughts like ' I guess I'm the only one who cares about the upkeep of this place. I guess I need to sacrifice whatever spare time I can find so that I can clean this house'. Not a fun way to live. Yesterday I was fighting these thoughts and feelings, again; but maybe it was Jesus working in my heart, or Dad's good advice. Whatever the case, instead of worrying and stressing about the workload, I chose to point my thoughts in a different direction. I took my mind from all the messy house and found my eyes fixed on the living room picture of my family. I realized it's not worth it to obsess about the temporary mess in the face of my perennial blessings: family, a job, and good health. And I was no longer burdened down by work and upkeep - I was happy to be spending time at home. Suddenly the strain was gone. I had just undergone a switch.
Thirdly, I love metaphors, so now I will try to connect these two unrelated ideas into my main theory, "The Switch". So first I talked about the switch between chest voice and head voice.While I had been working so hard to sing clearly and strong through those middle notes, I was actually attempting to accomplish something impossible. As soon as I let my voice handle that switch the way it wanted to, I was able to sing those notes clearly. How is the second idea even related? Well, I couldn't help but think of how when I was focused on making life work, and making the house stay clean so that I could enjoy the rest of life, I was constantly overwhelmed. But when I decided to enjoy life by taking a walk and practicing my music in spite of the work that needed done, I was able to see things differently. I was able to see housework as merely temporary, and minor. Simply put, work became my servant instead of my master. There is the switch; and also, my metaphor.
I'm in the middle of being nineteen. This summer is full of new things for me, and this particular lesson about the switch is a particular touchy one for me. I will come back to it this whole month, probably; and then perhaps all year; and then maybe the rest of my life. Still, I am learning, slowly. Life on this side of the switch is so much better than life on the other!
