Mile-High Taps
My barbershop chorus, The River City Chorus of Mason City, IA, through a joint project with the Minneapolis Commodores chorus, scored high enough last fall to earn a wildcard slot in the summer International Barbershop Harmony Society competition. It is a feat achieved by very few of the many choruses in the world and certainly a once-in-a-lifetime experience for this particular chorus which usually does not score high enough to get into the contest. The international contest this year is in Denver, CO, in July.
Today I pulled out of going to the contest entirely, an event that further cements my feeling that most of life sucks.
The reasons are numerous. A large part is available finances (or lack thereof). A part is the enormous responsibilities currently sitting on my shoulders trying to manage all of my jobs. And a part is that I have lost the "spark" for the hobby almost entirely.
I think the constant stress in my life trying to juggle all this shit is destroying my ability to relax enough to enjoy something like barbershop singing or any other sort of enjoyment or relaxation. I’m so wired and wound and ripped up all the time that letting go of that is becoming near on impossible. Going to rehearsals every Monday night have become only one more thing to fit into my life. Going to the contest would involve leaving on the last possible flight to get there, stressing the entire time about money and my responsibilities back home, and then catching the first possible flight back as well. In short, I wouldn’t enjoy hardly a second of the entire experience.
So that, coupled with the fact that we really could use the money somewhere else, caused me to write an email tonight and pull out. I absolutely hated doing it, but I essentially had no choice. This has been ripping me up for days; I’ve been stressed about it, thinking about my options, weighing things, re-weighing them, jugggling options in my mind — one does not throw away a one-time experience easily.
In the end, I had to practically force myself to write the email to terminate my involvement, but it was necessary or I was going to start puking blood or something.
It sucks. It royally, royally sucks. I hate these moments when life backs you into a corner and doesn’t give you a reasonable, logical way out. Sure, I could have gone and thrown responsibility to the wind, but one doesn’t do that when you’re adult and thinking and rational. One does that when you’re 15 and are invincible or 18 and cocky. A man of 29 is expected to suck it up and deal with it properly, which is what I did, no matter how much I’ll hate myself for it later.
And now…back to the grindstone of life, to be crushed or rubbed or burred into whatever shape fate has for me and my soul.
(12 comments) said:
