From professional singer to advocational singer: A fun emotional journey of guilt, shame, and acceptance

It will always take courage to dramatically change the plan you originally had for your life and career.  Leaving what you know and stepping into the unknown, especially not knowing if you'll succeed, is a scary thing.

I'm not gonna lie, when I told my friends and family that I was making this career change from professional-ish singer to SLP, most people were crazy happy about it.  My mom was happy because she had always seen my love for medicine and science, so I think she was happy I was going more in that direction.  But a lot of other folks I met always thought of one thing:  The money.  The SLP field has plenty of job openings, even in this tough economy, so it's a stable future career...unlike singing, obviously.  So that must be why I was doing it, right?  I mean, vocal injury...blah blah blah, but part of me must like the good job prospects, right?  Okay, well, I would be lying if I said the potential for a good, stable job isn't appealing.  Of course it is!  But changing from singer to voice scientist brought a different thought of myself:  Quitter.

Singing is what I know.  Training to be a singer is what I put years and years of effort and put *mumble mumble* amount of money into.  Making a career change after over a decade of musical training made me feel like a big, fat quitter.  I mean, I had finally gotten my voice back in working order!  I was finally able to make a professionally-viable sound!  I finally had something to offer the musical world!  How could I just quit after all of my struggles?  How could I just hang up my hat when I finally had a chance to be competitive in the performance circuit?

The truth is, I didn't give it up quickly.  As I started my classes for the SLP undergraduate leveling courses, I figured I'd be able to do professional singing on the side of being an SLP, no problem.  I kinda thought of SLP as a totally awesome supplement to my singing career.  I still practiced everyday.  I still intended to do this particular state voice competition that year, and I still intended to audition for summer shows and YAPS.  But very shortly after staring my classes, my goals in the SLP field began to readjust, I began to totally fall in love with the field, I started to desire a PhD after the master's degree, and I realized I had to start giving up some of those dual-career dreams of mine.

The breaking point came when the application deadline for that state competition was approaching.  I went to my voice teacher for a lesson knowing I'd need to really bust my a** over the next two months to get into competition shape since I had not been getting regular coachings in while in school.  I had a good friend of mine, also a singer, who was really excited for me to do the competition.  He was convinced that I would place very highly (which I doubted very much), but at the least, he felt I would finally be able to show all those folks who knew me "pre-therapy" what my voice could "really do"...now that it was healed up.  (Remember, I had this injury for probably about ten years before my diagnosis...including during all of my master's of music program.)  My teacher, though, felt I had too much on my plate already, so she suggested I not do the competition.  Being the great teacher she is, she recognized that I wasn't totally in the performance-career-mode anymore, and busting yourself to compete in something that you're just not that into is exhausting and rather pointless when you already have a lot going on.  So, just like the lesson when she suggested I look into SLP as a career, I left that lesson thinking about what she said, and I realized she was right, I probably shouldn't sign up.

When I got home, I looked over my class schedule and realized the competition date was the same week as three of my mid-terms, and two major projects were due that week as well.  And what I had already discovered from my first semester in SLP, being in a non-music major yields very little time to practice music at all.  See, it's hard just keeping your voice in shape if you're not in music school or performing, cause you have to make time just to sing everyday.  As a voice student, though, you sing everyday anyway.  So even if you're not practicing your own rep., at least your instrument is staying in tip-top shape.  I'd have to work double-time to not only get my rep. up to snuff, but also just to keep my voice in good shape day-in and day-out...and there's no way I'd be able to do all of that on the side of studying for three mid-terms, completing three projects, and maintaining a full studio of voice students.  It was too much, and I had to give up the idea of singing at the competition.

What I realized the most through all of this was that my more-latent vocal science passion was very quickly over-riding what had been my dominant passion of performing.  I felt a bit depressed letting go of those performance dreams, and I felt like I was letting myself, and all the people who supported my singing, down.  I really felt like I was morning the loss of "performance me."

The truth is, anytime someone chooses to leave behind the world he/she knows and the dreams he's/she's been following for years to enter into the unknown there is an inherent morning period for the dreams that are being lost in the transition.  You have to grieve for those dreams, let go of the guilt, and walk into the unknown, which, despite possible job prospects in any field, is a scary place to venture, for anyone.  When someone leaves a lucrative profession to follow a dream of a career in the world of performance, they are applauded for being so courageous.  But I say that anyone who leaves the world of performance for a different dream of a potentially lucrative career is still just as courageous.  It's leaving the known for the unknown and not getting stuck in morning for what you're giving up.  It's going through a tough emotional journey to hopefully come out better on the other side.  That takes courage.  So for anyone out there making this transition out of the performance world, just know that, while it sucks at first, you're no more of a quitter than that "accidental tenor" guy is...and you're just as brave in my book.

And I must say, I really am enjoying singing and music more now that it's not a job to me anymore.  The joy is back, and it's heightened by having enough vocal freedom to really express the music...unlike back in high school.  Being a high-quality avocational singer is very liberating, once you embrace it as your new place in the music world.

Update in Sept. 2015:  I posted a couple of short practice sessions of my singing on a new post recently. My professional-brain is saying I'm being gutsy just throwing out less-than-perfect singing, but my avocational-brain is saying, "Heck, why not?! If it sucks too bad, it doesn't really actually affect my professional life anymore, so just go for it anyway."