All posts by hannahviolin

I am a violinist. I also enjoy running, working out, reading, and hanging with my friends and cat.
Quarantine, Random thoughts, Teaching

Career musings

It’s tough being a freelancer. Or maybe I should say, it was tough? I have had several phases of my career, and this latest one is certainly less stressful in many ways.

I started out as a full-time orchestra player, right out of grad school. I also taught and added in extra gigs and tried to make as much money as possible to start paying off student loans and start saving. I was young and had energy, drive, and a great love of music. My job tried to take that away from me, and ultimately I made a very personal choice to leave. I haven’t regretted that choice, though I sometimes wonder what my life would be like if I had stayed.

I then spent a few years being a more full-time freelancer and teaching in the Cleveland area. I played all the gigs I could, was a member of up to 5 different regional orchestras, and spent a lot of time driving to and from with small groups of friends. It felt very temporary, but it was a lot of fun and I had a large amount of satisfying and fulfilling musical experiences. I worked nearly every day and worked long hours, and it had its ups and downs.

I moved to St Louis then, and hoped to continue in  much the same way, but there weren’t the same opportunities…there weren’t 5 or more regional orchestras in driving distance, and in fact only one really, and that wasn’t even really within driving distance, so I tried to up my teaching and did what I could. I played a bunch of gigs, here and there, everywhere, trying to get my name out there, and ended up being really busy as well, but not having that many satisfying or fulfilling musical experiences. Truthfully my great love is orchestral playing, but my second great love is doing things my way, and the two are hard to reconcile.

I talked with a student yesterday who had her first full orchestra playing experience before her lesson, and she described it as overwhelming. It is! I recall my first time playing in an orchestra (with winds and percussion and all) and it is overwhelming, the sound is unlike anything you can ever experience, but it is amazing. As I’ve gotten older, I have come to terms with the fact that that just isn’t something I will do very much in my life, if at all, and that just might be okay. It’s a hard thing to come to terms with, honestly, but getting upset over a $150 gig that takes up two nights a week isn’t the same as playing a Shostakovich Symphony with a group.

I have a lot of thoughts about orchestral musicians, and what work is worth, and the music world, and they are often jumbled, every changing, and not without a little bit of bitterness but also with love and hope. I won’t share most of them here, but I will just say this: I’m tired of the stress, and I’m tired of the hustle. I have been busier teaching than I’ve ever been in my life, but it’s so much happier. I miss seeing colleagues, but I don’t miss feeling so replaceable and being belittled.

I have a group I’ve played with for years that I have debated quitting for awhile, because of how it makes me feel. Sometimes I really enjoy it, and other times I feel taken advantage of. I’ve been yelled at, I’ve had a score thrown at me by the conductor, and to add insult to injury, my position wasn’t even considered worth mentioning to a new contractor. Nothing about the group ever made me feel good as a person (or hadn’t in a long time), but I hung on because I occasionally enjoyed playing the music…that’s how my performing career has felt over the past few years, maybe since I moved here.

That’s not to say that every experience has been that way, but enough for me to say, enough. I read other musicians who say how much they miss playing together. Maybe I’ve made other musicians feel bad as well, but I don’t miss being made to feel bad. I don’t miss pouring my playing into a job only to be passed over in the future to somebody new or somebody who grew up here, or somebody who was more “connected.” Maybe people read this blog and say, well, she doesn’t want to be hired anyway, she has a bad attitude, but there have been years that I have said yes to every single job I could, showed up early and prepared, practiced for hours and hours, and that didn’t matter either. And then once I stopped working, during the pandemic, I didn’t miss it. I filled up my schedule with students and there I am.

I have thought about this because there are gigs coming back. Now, some of those are an easy no, because, well, there’s a pandemic. But how to balance it? There are people I do want to play with, and there will be jobs I do want to take, but there will also be ones I don’t want to take. I know if I say no jobs will dry up, but they also dry up when I say yes, so I’m not living in fear anymore.

I’m being honest here, because this is a tough profession, and you should all know it. I don’t want the accolades and the pressure anymore. I’m tired of it. I don’t miss the audiences. Maybe that will change, maybe I’ll want something different in a few years, I don’t know. Maybe once the pandemic is over I won’t be afraid of crowds anymore, but maybe I’m just tired. I know I play well enough to play anything I want, and I’m okay with that. I’ll always be asked first if I play in the St Louis Symphony, and unless the answer is yes people won’t ever think I’m any good, so who cares what they think anyway?

So, those are my current career musings. I added it up and I’m currently teaching about 40 hours a week, counting a little bit of driving around, but not counting grading or admin work. No wonder I feel so busy! We’ll see what I decide to do next fall (I think I need to drop something) but for now, I’ll just work and work, which is something I’ve always been good at, and I will hope that I make a positive impact on some of my students. I’m not going to pretend that music is some sacred thing, that being a music teacher or musician makes me a better person, because I think that’s rationalizing something that we are worried we are wasting our time doing. (A good friend once said, “Musicians always think they are doing the Lord’s Work” and that made me think!) I think music is worthwhile and it is fun to play the violin. I think learning to play an instrument is good thing for kids to do and helps them in their lives overall and that’s a good enough reason.

But that would be going off on another tangent, so I’ll just say…lots more students to teach today, and then a nice weekend of relaxing and trying to do something fun in the cold and during the pandemic before another long week of teaching.

What about you? Do you feel like the pandemic has made you second guess your life choices or change your trajectory or work-life balance?

Deep Thoughts, Quarantine, Random thoughts

Rainy Day

We’ve had some snow here, finally, though no snow day. And today I think all the snow is going to get washed away with rain…the weather says currently we are having a frozen mix but it just looks like rain to me so I think my app is a little off.

The weekend ahead is like all of the weekends, nothing really going on after my Saturday morning CAD (Improvisation) Class. I’ve been enjoying teaching two classes a week to a small amount of students, though I need a few more to really make it fun for everybody. Time will tell though, I’m sure.

This week was difficult as far as being exhausted and headache-y. The fall semester started up for both of my colleges so I had a full schedule, lots of computer time, plus getting up around 5:30 am to get to my before school classes in person three days a week. I am going to three different elementary schools in my district each week to teach one small class (ranges from 2 to 4 students). The district is good in that we are only teaching kids who are already in the same classroom, and we leave before the rest of the kids show up for the day. But it’s still a lot of being around people, compared to not being around people at all. I also started teaching a small ensemble class in person, only 4 of us total in a very large room.

The good news is that my parents and two of my sisters have gotten their first vaccination shots. I’m happy for them, but I’m a little jealous that other states are already inoculating teachers and Missouri says it’ll be a few more months. It’s odd, reading news stories about how children need to be back in school and we need to get teachers vaccinated so they can return to the classroom…they are back here in Missouri, with varying degrees of being allowed to work from home and varying degrees of how many students are back. My district is good in that they require mask wearing (no issues with the kids and that) and that they seem to be doing a good job contact tracing all illnesses. But still, it’s a risk, and the only thing I could have done to avoid the risk was to quit my job.

It’s also odd seeing people so upset about places reopening indoor dining here and there…I can’t imagine eating indoors at a restaurant. I just can’t. I haven’t eaten a meal with anybody except Louie since it got cold (we had a few outdoor get-togethers with friends earlier) and I haven’t eaten a meal indoors with anybody since my sister Leslie and her family left after visiting in early September. We knew their visit was a bit risky but they had been limiting their exposure at that point and so had we. Once Louie went back into the classroom in the fall I felt our risk as a couple was higher and now that we are both in person 4 to 5 times a week I continue to believe that any level of socializing outside of our house, barring some sort of very spaced/distanced outdoor activity would be incredibly irresponsible. It is both our responsibility not to bring COVID home from work but also not to take it there.

How do you all deal with the isolation? I spend entirely too much time online, yet I feel like that is one of my limited connections to people. I feel pretty isolated from any friends I had before, and I had already been feeling like most of those friendships were surfacey and limited anyway. Other friendships seemed to be based more on doing things which will likely return when doing things returns…I’d love to have a few more friends I could talk to, but I don’t feel like scheduling more zoom meetings, and sometimes texting feels exhausting. My work schedule this school year has been pretty exhausting, and though having the weekends free helps recover, I find myself just wanting to spend the weekend lying around reading and don’t have the energy for anything more, including social interaction of any form. Likely this is a bit of depression, but I’m hoping it’s all due to circumstances and will change with the change of weather, if nothing else.

I’ve been enjoying reading a ton of mystery novels lately. I like to find a long series and read the whole thing, so I get to experience one character finding dead body after dead body and helping the (often bumbling) detective solve the case. I particularly enjoy novels set in another country, usually England (currently reading a second series on the Isle of Mann, which is now on my list of places to visit someday.) I find reading is a nice break from hearing violin over the internet and it’s a quiet activity to do lying down.

I often wake up in the middle of the night stressed out about my work schedule and the future. The days are long, but absolutely possible, but I think it’s just getting up so early that gets me, and I (especially in the middle of the night) worry. I just worry, about the future of my career, the future of our country, and of our planet.

But I guess we will all continue pushing through, and keeping on. I think I’m just tired and need a change of scenery but that’s unlikely until after the school year finishes, so I’ll manage. I always remind myself many people have lived through worse, and while that’s true, it is pretty stressful living through a pandemic, dealing with the stress and worries of the coup and civil unrest (I find I cry a lot more often after January 6, it was some sort of breaking point for me), and trying to make it all work and hold it together all the time to be strong for the students. It’s a lot! I know other people have different or similar concerns, but we are all going through a lot right now.

Hope

Inauguration

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I don’t want to jinx anything, but I think it’s going to happen.

I can’t wait until we have a president who isn’t constantly lying to us, and who is willing to admit that COVID is a real problem that we have to deal with.

The past few weeks have been pretty tough, every since the riots especially. I’ve just been working, getting up early to go teach violin to small classes at a school (in person).

I’ll sleep better tonight than in a long time, knowing that the people in charge will be doing their best for the American people again. They will fail at things. They will do things wrong and we will disagree, but I will know that at heart, they are doing their best. This isn’t actually too much to ask in our government, as we have had it for most of my life.

It’s a shame how little some people are willing to settle for. It’s a shame that some people think that lies, hate, and violence are the way forward. It’s a shame that some people choose white supremacy while, at the same time, insisting that racism isn’t a huge problem in this country.

It’s a tragedy that over 400,000 Americans have died of a disease due to one man’s ego taking over. The president couldn’t stand failure so he just pretended it didn’t exist. He chose to stoke division and hate rather than lead. Instead of our country taking the lead in the pandemic and possibly saving 100s of thousands of lives, we relinquished all leadership and left the pandemic management as a free-for-all. Those of us lucky enough to have lived so far have lost nearly a year of our lives trying to stay healthy. Some have chosen to live their lives however they feel, not caring who gets sick around them, and this has divided our country further.

I don’t envy the job President Biden will have ahead of him. I doubt he really wanted this job, but I think he’ll do it, and he’ll do his best. That’s a change from the previous occupant, who did his worst, intentionally.

I’m not happy yet, because the past ten months have taken my ability to feel true happiness away.

I did buy a bottle of sparkling wine to open tonight after work though. We will celebrate at home, just the two of us, as we have celebrated all the holidays in the past year.

Christmas, Random thoughts

Undecorating

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Undecorating for Christmas is far less exciting. I did most of it yesterday, and just have to take down the tree today at some point and put the boxes away.

My last post was perhaps a little negative. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t regret any time I spent playing music with other people, particularly my quartet over the past few years. I was just realizing (for the umpteenth time) that chamber music has never been my great love, and that I don’t miss playing in small ensembles.

I have missed playing in large ensembles for a long time, but the orchestral world being what it is, both difficult to procure a position and seemingly quite difficult to enjoy that position after you have it…I am fine with my current lot in life.

Today is my last official day of vacation , even though I’ve been ramping up my work each day, at least from the perspective of answering and sending emails, and I even practiced violin a bit yesterday. Over the break, I did other work stuff besides emails, such as submitting grades and setting up courses in Canvas, but I have to say that overall it was amazingly relaxing.

I watched some Great British Baking Show while doing cross-stitch. I read several good books, including Jodi Picoult’s The Book of Two Ways, Brit Bennett’s The Vanishing Half, Katharine McGee’s American Royals and Majesty. Louie and I rewatched the entire Lord of the Rings Trilogy, watched the latest season of Cobra Kai, and are working our way through Schitt’s Creek (two thoughts, why did we wait so long, and of course everybody’s favorite character is David!). I did a lot of cooking and baking, I did some organizing and decluttering though nothing major, and I did a good amount of workouts. We went on a few hikes and walks as well.

We woke up New Year’s morning to a bit of ice storm debris…I forgot to mention this before.

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The neighbor’s tree had lost some branches into our yard. Luckily it didn’t seem to cause any damage and Louie was able to saw the branches down easily enough.

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The other day we went to Cliff Cave park to walk around. There were more people there than we would have liked, and a few too many groups of people who didn’t see fit to step to the side (rather than walking 2 or 3 abreast) OR wear masks, but we had ours to put on when needed. I’m always more concerned with people who might be walking or running in front of us for any length of time than I am with people who are just walking by, but still, it’s a pandemic and it’s not hard to give space on a wide path.

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Very large trees! That’s the Mississippi River.

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A picture of Louie taking a picture.

So tomorrow I’m back to teaching. I am both looking forward to it and not looking forward to it. Louie tells me I can’t retire yet, so I guess I’ll log into zoom inside. I originally set up my schedule to start on Wednesday rather than Monday because I was supposed to do jury duty. I started worrying about it a week ago and got a postponement of a year, but they did end up canceling the week (due to COVID) anyway. I guess this time next year I’ll be complaining about jury duty, and I’ll have to miss some work for it (as usual) but I’m glad to have another year. I was originally scheduled to do it in June, then September which I postponed to January. It’s a mess, isn’t it.

One last collection of thoughts. Headaches. Back in early 2020 I finally saw a doctor about some bad headaches I’d been getting, which I started calling migraines. I don’t know sometime, whether it’s a normal headache or a migraine, or if people get headaches like I do, or if they are all migraines. In any case, I got some nice prescription medicine that I end up taking about 2 days a month on average for a headache. The medicine tends to work really well, though the side effects are that I feel fuzzy for an hour or more, and generally a bit more tired and thirsty. It’s a decent trade off though, and I’m glad to have the medicine. I can usually feel the headache disappearing into fuzziness in my body, and that’s a real relief. I’m dealing with one right now, which I suspect is also a bit stress related, between pandemic worries, political concerns, and the worries of going to in person teaching next week and getting back online as well…

How is your week at work going? I’m assuming most people are back to work this week after having had some time off, though I know most people don’t get to take two weeks off like I was able to this year. This year there is no spring break from college, it’s just a slog to the end, so wish us luck!

Deep Thoughts

Figuring it out

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking and bullet journaling lately and really trying to figure out my next steps. I’m not talking about anything drastic (or am I) but more like, how do I keep the good stuff from this pandemic time of life? In other words, do I want to return to the gigging life that I was doing before, or do I want to just focus on my teaching?

So many of my colleagues have expressed their sorrow and dismay at missing playing music together, and maybe I’m just already so jaded and dead inside (half kidding), but I don’t miss it. I miss seeing people, oh for sure, but I don’t miss the supposed joy of music-making.

I have always been a great lover of playing in a large ensemble/orchestra, and I can remember the feeling of being onstage for my first youth orchestra rehearsal, and my first All-State Orchestra rehearsal, which were my earlier orchestral memories. And so many times since then, I loved playing some fantastic pieces for orchestra, and I had so many wonderful opportunities to perform with terrific musicians and loved so much of it!

But the drudgery was also there, and what was supposed to be a dream job, playing in an orchestra full-time, just wasn’t. It was drudgery, it was something I didn’t look forward to and ultimately, something I dreaded. But I continued seeking great experiences and while freelancing in Cleveland I found some of the joy of playing orchestra again, but also so much of the drudgery.

I’d thought when I moved here to St Louis that I would have a similar experience with orchestra, where it was a lot of fun but also not as fun, but it turns out that instead it was too far to drive to play with a group, and the local group wasn’t interested in me because I had the wrong teacher, and then after that because I was divorced from a member of the group, and so then here I just sat. I played a lot of chamber music, which was often rewarding enough, but it has never been my great love. It’s too dependent on personalities, and I often feel like it’s just an extension of what I do with kids all day long…I teach so much that I’d love to just make music instead of having to convince people how to do something or spend too much time figuring out what’s going wrong and having it be so dependent on me.

I think, perhaps for string players, some of the appeal of orchestra is NOT having to figure out the problem, to just being able to show up, do your best, and let somebody else tell you what to do. Granted, the appeals of orchestra are the same things that cause the difficulties and the drudgery, but it is nice, as an adult, to have a time where things are just not your responsibility. Chamber music never has that, and while that’s also a net positive, it’s tiring.

I have spent so much of my adult life pushing myself to work longer, to work harder, to hustle, to network. And then the pandemic hit, after I felt I was really getting somewhere here, and all the playing work disappeared. And then I just waited, and I taught, and then I realized, oh, no, plenty of people are doing outdoor work, but not me. It didn’t matter, absolutely none of the things I’d done over the past years mattered, and I was absolutely alone in my career. There was nobody who had my back or cared if I ever worked again.

That might sound harsh, but it really is true. There are some musicians who recommend me and call me for this or that now, and some excellent church music directors that I am glad to work with, but nobody really cares. Why should they? If I never perform on violin again, I don’t think anybody apart from my mom will miss it.

So where does that leave me? One, it tells me there is no point is trying to take a whole bunch of jobs in order to end up with the ones you enjoy. No job seems to lead to another job, it’s all negated here in St Louis by the fact that I am not from here anyway, so I might as well only take the specific jobs that I want in the moment and say no to any others. I’ve tried taking all the jobs, and that made people angry. I’ve tried being loyal to certain groups, and that didn’t earn me any points, and I’ve tried taking only the jobs that don’t conflict with other jobs…and it all ended up with nothing. So I think I’ll take jobs I want to do, and mostly not take anything that conflicts with my current teaching schedule.

As far as teaching, I have a busy but manageable schedule as it stands. I don’t think I should take any new students at the time as I’m adjusting to my new morning schedule, haven’t lost any students yet going into January, and don’t know how many college students I have. I may be teaching an ensemble in person at one college, and I’ve added two group classes in improvisation/Creative Ability Development per week, which I’m looking forward to. I have enough going on, probably more than enough, and I need to consider getting back into a practice routine again.

I’m also continuing playing with my band and we are looking to replace Meghan (who moved to Germany) with somebody else, and fingers crossed that continues to be fun. I don’t always love it, especially  not when I’m tired and overly busy, but I’ve enjoyed the music making and the improvisation that I’ve been pushed to do, so it’s a good thing to keep doing. I’m also happy to play some more serious concerts, and I would love to play some shows at the Fox again if and when traveling shows start traveling again (it makes me crazy busy but the pay is great and I really do enjoy it.)

So there are my thoughts on a Sunday morning. I’ve learned over the years that a career is everchanging, and often I think I’ve got things figured out and it turns out either than I don’t, or maybe I did and then things changed. I also find that things tend to work out well enough if you are willing to work hard, and that has continued to stay true throughout all my career changes.

This isn’t a career change, but a mindset shift. I don’t need to operate my career from a scarcity mindset anymore. I’m not desperate for cash, I just need to maintain a steady income like most people, and want to do that in the most fulfilling way.

The last thing I really started thinking about recently was that I have spent too much of my career worrying about what other people think and letting what they think about my career dictate my choices. Nobody cares, except when they are judging what you do, right?Musicians always think their way is best and that people going a different way are wrong or inferior. I’ll just do my thing.

Things are always changing. Every year things look different, and I’m always adding and subtracting. The title of this post says “figuring it out” but of course I haven’t figured it out, but I’m always trying to Smile

Quarantine

Year in Review

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It’s been a year, for sure. I don’t know that tonight will change anything, but 2020 will be behind us, and we will be that much closer to January 20.

I was looking back through my blog this past year, and I was really struck by how much life changed in March. Everything just stopped and hasn’t started back, and might not for months and months more. It’s really weird, and awful, and stressful, and we are all experiencing it in our own different ways.

There have been some bad things that happened this year, and good things. I want to reflect on the loss first, and then the good things.

We’ve all experienced loss this year in one form or another. I had a few personal losses: my friend and colleague Tracy; a friend of my family and one of my best friend’s dad’s growing up Mr. Pitts.; my friend Roz’s dad who I never met but felt like I had; Louie’s late wife’s stepdad who I had met several times, Bill; my mom’s good friend Ramona. How much of this was COVID, how much would have happened anyway…how much is just from growing older and more people you know die? At least two of those were directly from COVID, that much I know. It’s not too hard to wear a mask. It’s harder to avoid seeing friends and family, but it’s better to avoid them for a year than forever. My thoughts are with closer friends and family members of everybody I mentioned and I hope they are all finding peace.

There are and were many other losses: losing a trip to Paris, to Colorado, missing seeing Hilary Hahn play live for the first time, losing an opportunity to perform Sarasate’s Carmen Fantasy, and Brahms Piano Quintet, missing seeing friends for a whole year, having students graduate and move away without seeing them in person, missing seeing my students in person for nearly a year, missing hearing live violin other than my own playing, missing having my birthday with friends, Thanksgiving, Halloween, Christmas, New Year’s Eve, etc. (Some of those things might have been able to happen but since everybody has their own idea of what’s “safe” in the pandemic, what is truly the safest is just to do things within your own household, since Louie has been teaching in person all fall. )

There are losses I’ll never know, of things that might have happened. And I may be lamenting my performance career, though who knows, but for better or for worse, teaching has brought me through this pandemic, and missing all my performances showed me that I don’t miss that many of my performances.

These losses are mostly surface losses, but worth mentioning in a personal blog. We all lost so much, and some lost so much more. I feel so lucky to have made it through this pandemic as well as I have, and I hope my luck continues.

Which leads us into the good and interesting parts of the year:

I got to see my sister Leslie and her family several times over the summer, before things seemed entirely too risky to even leave the city. Our cat Miles got returned to us, because of his microchip. We managed to pull together a camping trip to Yellowstone in late summer. In March right before everything went bad we visited my friends April and Charlie in Atlanta and got to see their new house. My dad visited briefly in February en route to Yellowstone and points west.

I learned how to make and can jams and pickles. I did a series of livestream concerts, both alone and with my friend Michael and our band. I put in a garden and harvested ridiculous amounts of zucchini and delicata squash. We did a lot of hikes nearby and walks around Forest Park. I read a ton of books and watched a lot of TV shows, many of which were good.

I had a business logo made and added Creative Ability Development classes to my schedule. I successfully moved all my students online during the pandemic and took online pedagogy classes. I started a new school job teaching beginning violin. 

My family started having a weekly zoom meeting and have kept it up all year long, communicating and bonding more than ever during this difficult time.

Before the pandemic we went to many concerts and jazz shows and hope to do that again someday. I took some time off practicing and spend a lot of time reflecting on how I want my career to look post-pandemic. I sent Christmas boxes to my family members, and all but one have arrived. I got better at cooking and tried dozens of new recipes. I planned and executed various fun holiday menus for the two of us, and kept eating healthy and interesting meals. I kept up a regular exercise routine.

I lived through a pandemic so far, and continue living through an attempted coup by the losing presidential candidate. I am hopeful that things will get better, and that the pandemic will come to an end worldwide in 2021.

I learned that I enjoy having weekends free from work, and that I didn’t miss playing weddings and some other gigs. I did miss playing Christmas jobs, and I’m not sure if I missed playing regular concerts or if I miss the adrenaline rush. I definitely like the lower stress work I do now, but that might be because I have enough outside stress.

I don’t want to pretend to guess or know what 2021 will have in store, but here are some hopes and plans I have:

I’m greatly looking forward to our new president, and new leadership on dealing with COVID and the vaccine. We need competence in government, and I am so eternally grateful to other Biden voters for saving our country from the brink, and hopefully bringing us back into the world and getting through to the end of this pandemic.

I hope to continue to feel positive about teaching and grow my CAD/improv teaching. I’m loving that aspect of my job right now. I also want to continue to feel like my schedule isn’t too out of control and that I can continue to have weekends more free with the exception of things that are fun and enjoyable to do.

I hope to start being able to attend concerts and shows again by the end of 2021 at least. I hope to be able to start visiting family again this year and I hope to be able to resurrect some friendships or cultivate new ones.

I hope to continue to be healthy and happy (enough) and I hope that 2021 is a better year and will end on a more positive note than this year.

Happy New Year to you! May 2021 bring better things.