When I Grow Up

Before I tell you about the Paris trip, I have another post to share. I wrote this early in the morning on May 31 while on a train to Glasgow. I was on my way to pick up Jenn for her visit and that week I'd had a particularly disappointing job rejection.  

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Do you remember what you wanted to be when you grew up? How many times have we all been asked that question. I don’t know why children are asked so early what they want to grow in to. Shouldn’t we let them just have as much fun as they can until they have to start being serious?

At various times growing up I wanted to be various things. Through most of elementary school I was convinced I was going to be a doctor. I wanted to help people feel better and deliver babies. I think it’s also because I liked the payday amount doctors made in the Game of Life and thought that would translate into real life. I’m not sure exactly when this aspiration left me, but I do know it had something to do with finding out how many years of school it would take to actually be a doctor.

I remember briefly thinking being an astronaut would be amazing and when I started drumming I had a brief flirtation with the idea of being Garth Brooks’ famous female drummer. But in junior high and through some of high school I was convinced I’d go into theatre. I fell in love with live theatre thanks to my parents who took my brother and me to see plays at Rosebud Dinner Theatre and Theatre Calgary. I naturally took drama in grade eight and nine as my option and loved every scary trip up onto the stage. People told me I could sing and buoyed up by their praise I played the lead role of Dorothy in an Oz Christmas Play and the adult Simba part in our little version of the Lion King.

My love of playing a part, and being in Three Hills coincidentally on the day the auditions for their community theatre company were happening, landed me with a non-speaking role in Anne of Green Gables. I was Prissy Andrews and I charmed the guy who played the school teacher - the character who eventually became my husband in the play - to the best of my ability. I loved every second of that experience. I was terrified of going to rehearsals alone and obviously I was upset with not having lines, but every time I went on the stage and every time the audience gasped or laughed at my sudden reappearance at the end of the play as a terribly pregnant wife was bliss.

I played with the idea of auditioning to go to school at Rosebud after high school. I don’t know why I didn’t pursue it seriously, but I think it had something to do with the program not qualifying for student loans. That and probably the fact that acting is not exactly a stable career choice.

I’ve joined a choir here in Edinburgh. It’s an adult pop music choir run by a music school in Morningside and so far it’s been great. It’s reminded me that it’s okay to be a little silly in a group of people and it’s okay to let people hear you. I’ve spent so much time singing in the car and at home that I’ve forgotten how great it is to be part of a four part harmony. This week, as an exercise, we sang part of a hymn and with the lights turned off and my eyes closed I tuned out all the stress and disappointment of the week and just sang. It’s one thing to listen to a great piece of music and another thing entirely to hear where your voice is fitting into that music.

I’m writing this not to say that I’m going to take up a new life as a performer. My intention was to actually write this post to talk about rejection and my inability to accept it easily. Instead I think I’ve just helped myself realise the best coping device I have to deal with yet another job rejection blow - do something you love. Do something that you have full confidence in. Believe that you are actually good at things and build yourself back up by remembering what it was you loved when you were little.

Maybe dreaming and wishing and planning for what we’ll be when we grow up isn’t about what we actually become. Maybe it’s about cultivating the things we will hold onto and love doing when what we do become isn’t perfect or what we thought it would be.

Huh.