Someone asked me lately whether I regretted having children so young (I was 25 when Erica was born, 28, with Travis). It’s not the first time I’ve been asked, and I usually just brush off the question, because the easy answer is no. However, this time I paused and thought about the major milestones of my life. What would my life look like had I not chosen those paths, or had they not chosen me?
I have no regrets about getting married and having children in my twenties and basically missing 80’s culture. (I’ve often answered, when someone mentions a band or movie I’ve never heard of, that I was busy in the 80’s!) However, I pondered several times over the years whether I should keep playing for the OSM.
I won my audition two years after I started playing with the orchestra full time. By the time I auditioned, the bloom was already off the rose. I knew the job wasn’t the dream I thought it would be. There were downsides, for instance, my small part in the grand scheme of the orchestra can be, well, really boring. I’m not going to go into all the whys and wherefores, but believe me when I say that playing second trombone in an orchestra is not a creative job. It can be exciting at times, it can be satisfying if you play a difficult piece really well, it can be enjoyable to make beautiful sounds with your colleagues, it can also be nerve-wracking as hell, but it’s rarely a creative outlet, at least not for me. The main reason it isn’t, and can actually be quite frustrating, is that most of the creative choices are dictated by the person waving their arms up front. As a section player, I’m restricted to doing what I’m told, whether I agree or not.
So I used to imagine what my life would have been like had I not won, or I would imagine quitting and trying something else. I couldn’t come up with anything I really wanted that would be worth the risk, so I just kept playing. Here I am thirty years later, still doing a job that is, like most jobs, sometimes fun, sometimes stimulating, sometimes challenging, but mostly routine.
Perhaps it’s the fact that my job doesn’t satisfy my creative impulses that has prompted me to do many things in my spare time that are stimulating, and creative. I started this blog, I got into gardening, I took up knitting in a big way, I started a vlog (The Guilty Knitter perhaps you’ve heard of it?). I’ve enjoyed all these pursuits a lot and my orchestra job has allowed me the freedom and financial security to do them. Instead of feeling like I wasted my life doing something that wasn’t perfect for me, I’m more and more grateful that I’ve had this job, the mixed bag that it is.
I know there are many people out there who think an orchestra job would be a dream and can’t believe there’s anything to criticize. To those people I apologize for breaking the third wall. I don’t mean to dump on my job (not too much, anyway). Sure, it’s not as romantic as I thought it would be, I’m sick of touring and I don’t like getting stressed about tough concerts, and I wish I weren’t asked to play things in ways that go against my instincts a lot of the time; but it’s been a great job in many ways, and as I said, it gave me a lot of freedom to explore other avenues without necessarily having to make money doing them. A lot of artists have to have ‘day’ jobs and make their art on the side. I’ve been particularly lucky to have a job that pays well, has many perks, and that allows me to do what I love on the side. The illusion most people outside the milieu have that playing in an orchestra is an artistic, creative, exciting job (in fact, not really a “job” at all!), always made me feel guilty about not feeling fulfilled doing it. It’s much better for me to see it as it is: a very good ‘day’ job. There’s a lot less frustration if your expectations aren’t so high. I wish I’d come to accept that a lot sooner.
P.S. there are probably lots of musicians who find fulfillment playing in the orchestra; or if not, then outside of the orchestra, in chamber music, or as soloists, or doing completely different kinds of music or learning different instruments. Strangely, maybe, my creative impulses didn’t drive me in those directions. I felt inhibited and decided I was “just” a symphonic trombonist. I’ve done some outside playing, perhaps I could have done more, but I didn’t. I found other outlets, and I don’t regret that (too much…)
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