Audition

I went to school this morning as prepared as I could be for my audition. If I succeeded, I would be allowed back into the music program to complete my degree in Church Music, otherwise I would have to graduate witha  Bachelor of Religious Studies. I spent every extra minute I had in the last 2 weeks practicing the music they gave me and felt I did well at my audition. Ultimately the final decision was a no. I will not be allowed to continue to pursue a Bachelor of Arts in Music. They said I lacked dynamic range, my phrasing was non-existent until I had someone conducting me and the syncopation in the last song I sight read was non-existent. All of it was true. My personal feeling is that the clumsiness I have felt in my left hand for a long time now is not just that I am out of practice. When I get a migraine aura, it takes out the sensation in the left side of my body and if I injure myself, it tends to be on my left side. I think it is likely there is damage from the fight when I was 16 that can’t be diagnosed to the parts of my brain that communicate with my left side. Whether that is right or not, I have to move on with my life. The adjudicators did comment that they felt my music, though not of professional calibre, was still beautiful and encouraged me to continue playing. The triumphs I saw were that a year ago when someone tried to conduct me, I couldn’t play anything at all. Today I was able to play the melody and a couple of harmony notes and maintain some semblance of rhythm while being conducted. I also consider it a major triumph that I had to perform under scrutiny and I didn’t have a panic attack. Don’t get me wrong, I was really nervous, but it wasn’t a panic attack. Apparently those nerves listened this morning when I told them they weren’t allowed to play their old games of tying up my fingers, sitting on my chest, and erasing my memory. 

I want to thank everyone for their prayers and support through this process. It has been difficult but I feel that with your support, I rose to the challenge and faced it well, even if it didn’t turn out the way I wanted. God has been revealing a plan to me for the last year that many of you have heard about. There is a gap in both the adult and children’s education systems when it comes to teaching people with disorders like attention, mood, and learning disorders that affect learning. A piece of paper on my wall isn’t required for me to tell you that sitting in classrooms and trying to do homework for the last 12 years has been one of the most difficult experiences of my life and many other people out there like me feel the same way. I will finish my degree on the highest note I possibly can with my head held high and feeling accomplished for even completing the program. For many like me, that is something they will never do. Once I am done school, I will be moving forward with my idea to create kaiRos Cognitive Care Center. It will be a place where people like me can make connections to caregivers who believe they can do something significant with their lives, teachers who believe personal attention is a benefit, and friends who truly understand what they are going through. It will be birthed out of my passion to help others succeed and will run on the principle that none should be left behind. Information and the skills required to acquire it should be free, even to those who have trouble reading, deciding what to read first, feeling like reading all the time, or understanding what they read. It is true that when God closes one door, he inevitably opens another, even if we don’t see it at first and so I am going to walk through this one with His hand in mine. 

Though I am about to start a new chapter in my life, the close of this one is still hard to take. I will be spending a day or 2 grieving, eating chocolate, pampering myself and being loved on by my husband then I will stand up stronger, fiercer, steadfast in the love of Christ, knowing that God knows the plans he has for me. Plans to prosper me and not to harm me. Plans to give me a hope and a future. I have sought God with all my heart through this and he has shown me that he is faithful. I may not be doing a dance of joy for the outcome, but I give Him all the glory for what might come out of this. I thank you all for your continued love, prayers, hugs and support and look forward to seeing what God has in store for us together.

The Facebook Status

Some of you were taken very much by surprise by my Facebook status today. I feel you deserve more information than I can share in a simple status update so here it is. For those of you who didn't see it, the status was:

For anyone who might be listening:

I am now certain that Hope is no longer my friend. I wait, breath no longer abated, for Dignity to be quietly whisked away. Conversing with Dispair I find that it is my only companion, Sorrow my only refuge.

Many of you know that I have been working on my music degree for 13 years now on and off. Last year I was told not to expect to graduate this year and was ok with adding another year. A couple of weeks ago I found out my program co-ordinator was requiring another 3 years, solely for piano lessons. She told me to take solace in the fact that these lessons could be taken during the spring and summer to expedite the process, but they were necessary nonetheless. My husband and I have already spent $75,000 on this degree and I have given 13 years of my life to it both inside and out of the classroom. We decided before the year began that this would be my last year regardless of whether I graduated or not. We have already sacrificed the priviledge of owning our own house and buying our own car for this, and now we have reached the limit of what we are willing to sacrifice.

I set out this year to prove that I have overcome my performance anxiety, officially the only thing stopping me from graduating. I had hoped to change the minds of the administration and convince them I am really ready. I kind of understand them wanting me to be able to perform in public before they will give me a performance degree so I faced the mountain before me and said to it, "before this year is out, I will look back and you will be a mole hill, regardless of whether I graduate or not." I have pursued that goal with a vengence. I spend somewhere in the neighbourhood of 8-9 hours a day on the piano on the weekends. I thoroughly enjoy playing that much and I feel like I am making way better progress than I ever did before. I have already pretty much mastered an exercise given to me the first week of class this year and am trying to work through the one that has been my greatest challenge since day 1.

This is all well and good, but nowhere near worthy of the reaction you saw today. The impetus for that came from a conversation I had with my piano teacher today. I have been concerned with my progress in piano lessons as I know I will be years getting to a level of mastery the school is comfortable with at the rate I am going. I asked my piano teacher today whether I have viable skills as a musician, citing my composition and arranging skills and increased momentum in my lessons as evidence. He said they are awesome skills but you don't need a degree to do that and you won't make a living off it. He said that at the rate I'm going I shouldn't expect to be able to make any kind of decent living in the music industry either.

Please note that I long ago abandoned any ideas of making a "decent" living. My inability to keep the easiest of jobs and my frustration in the classroom have basically proven to me that I am not a bread-winner. That's my husband's job. I am just doing my best to find a place in this world that will give my existence some meaning and purpose. Something that will give some sense to the muck and mire that has been my life. There are MANY things in my life I have been told I can't do: be a secretary, be a shipping clerk, teach music for someone else's academy. The only thing that I have never been told I can't do is music. It is what I turn to when I am dispairing and when I am joyful. It is what gives me a reason to wake up in the morning. It is the last shred of hope I have before I sit down and listen to the voice in my head that screams loudly on a regular basis that I am a waste of human flesh and I should just crawl under a rock and die. I am grasping desperately to hold onto that hope as I am not convinced that my school sees the entire picture, but the intense respect and reverence I have for the musicians I am learning from gives their voice quite a bit of credibility in my mind. If they were to tell me the sky was green, I might just believe them for a little while.

Please know that all I have ever wanted to do with my life is to make music, whether I am composing my own or reproducing someone else's. The moment when I can forget about the mechanical side of reading the music and give myself to God's inspiration within the melodies and rhythms is sheer ecstasy to me. I feel like I am at home with God and we are playing around together. I can't leave that feeling behind but the venues where I would like to have explored this require some kind of certification. To work in a church, I have to have a certification that says I know the bible, to market myself as a musician, I need a past history of talent and skill, to join an orchestra, I need either conservatory or university training. I can't help but feel that I should be contributing to my household either by having and raising children or earning some money so we can be comfortable while we cope with not being able to right now and with what my piano teacher said today, I am feeling that door close very firmly in my face.

There are several things going through my heart right now. Most of them are anger directed at different people. Some at the people who told me I had to have a university degree to do anything when I was 19 years old, some at myself for believing them and wasting $75000 of my family's money, some at the education system for being so inflexible, some at the prostitutes who tried to kill me when I was 16 as it is the brain injury I got from that fight that has made it so I have to deal with these challenges. Ultimately there is no one to blame for this unfortunate circumstance and so my heart is broken that by no fault of my own, the thing from which I have drawn all of my value might be taken away from me.

The reason you saw the post you did was because this one hurts enough that I am not able to find the positive. I know it's there. If nothing else, God has taught me in my life that there is always a brighter side. This time I am hurting so bad that I am having trouble even looking for it. I have a meeting this Thursday with the Academic Dean, my program director and my piano teacher to discuss my program and I hope to convince them that there is something I can do, but have already been told there's not much point.

Please pray for me. I know that God's will is ultimately going to prevail whatever it may be and even if it is that I won't be able to graduate, some good will come of it. For today, I am left hurting very badly and feeling very alone. That said, it won't stop me from performing at Rockin' the Pygmy this Thursday, I just don't know exactly what I will be playing. Hopefully it will include Surrender.

Does God view the offering of a single, common person who has chosen out of devotion to follow Him as more pleasing than that of a ruler, priest or group of people.  This would apply significance to our choice to follow God devoutly in our personal lives. This does not make the offering of the priest or leader insignificant, just expected. It is like the story of the prodigal son. The son who did not run away showed by his actions his devotion to his father and the inability of the temptations of “freedom”, “pleasure” and “splendor” to turn him away from his devotion. His continued presence in the home became expected and triumph over temptation was never necessary, thus there was nothing to celebrate. In the passage being studied, the leaders and the priests have chosen roles that the offerings are expected regardless of whether that person wants to make them or not. In addition, the congregation as a whole may not in its entirety be sincere in the offering. They may be attending solely to avoid being singled out. They are not turning away from a sinful life by making the offering, instead they are doing it out of duty. Back to the story of the prodigal, the second son, by leaving, showed that he would entertain the idea of not living in the house. He showed that he could in fact be won over by temptation. His choice to return and remain at home was with the knowledge of what the other option could be. Returning and remaining was to be celebrated as he made the choice to reject “freedom” and “pleasure” and “splendor” over and over again each morning. It would be like having a modern conversion experience over and over again every time a person discovered they had sinned. Much could be said about the accuracy and legitimacy of this speculation, but for the purpose of this study, it will be left purely as that. Speculation and contemplation of what this could mean in the absence of direct scriptural confirmation or rejection of the exploration.

The Irritating Vibration Becomes The Resonant Hum

So it's taken a lot of work, a lot of tears and a lot of help from a lot of people (thanks Mom, Dad, Rich, Karin, Adele, Angeline, Colleen and everyone else that helped to keep me going this semester), but I feel like my life is starting to show some progress. It's not just a chaotic mess anymore. Goals that I have had on the back-burner for a very long time are finally starting to come together. I finished my semester having actually performed my first "Evolution of Lady K" concert, got B's in a lot of my classes and had a good argument as to why I would like the school to re-visit the 2 D's I did get. If my appeals are successful, my overall GPA this term would be around 2.4. Not great, but considering how badly I crashed and burned at the end, not entirely poor either.

I learned an extremely valuable lesson this semester. One that I probably should have already known and coming out the other end can honestly say I should have known better. I learned that no matter what I want to achieve in life, no matter how smart, talented, charismatic or funny I am, I CANNOT DO IT ALONE. I tried to rely on my own abilities this semester to manage my homework and life loads. What I keep forgetting is that my abilities are actually impaired. It is clinically diagnosed and as much as I don't want to see myself as having a disability or disorder of any kind, all the wishing in the world will not get rid of it. Unfortunately, it's just the way I am. Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying I'm just going to flop down and give up on anything I ever wanted to do saying "Woe is me, I'm broken". Au contraire, I am looking at it as just the opposite. I am not broken, I am different. There's nothing wrong with different. It's just different and that's ok. In fact, it means that I can dream of doing things like opening live-in treatment centers for people with Attention and learning disorders and developing a renaissance college of music in the city and not feel strange. If people look at me sideways about it, I just tell them "welcome to life with a dreamer".

I read a book called "The Disorganized Mind" this semester (thanks mom for helping me make sense of it). It is a book about the challenges faced by those with ADHD giving them strategies to manage these challenges in such a way as to be more successful in their everyday life. According to the book, the concept of "neuroplasticity" says a person with ADHD can learn out of their difficulties. That means that a brain never stops learning. Even if a person gets brain damage that stops them from doing something they previously could do, the brain is resiliant enough that by repetition and consistent effort (the same things required to teach anything to a 4 year old I might add) it is POSSIBLE (not guaranteed) that the person can re-learn what it is they could no longer do. The ADHD brain has physical differences in the area that deals with executive function and so those processes don't work the same. With the concept of neuroplasticity, people with ADHD and therefore impaired executive functions (memory, prioritization and attention) can hope to succeed by basically borrowing someone else's executive function to retrain their own. If instead of just sitting there with a mantra of "I want to do it so I can do it, I want to do it so I can do it" spinning yourself into oblivion, "The Disorganized Mind" recommends hiring what they call an ADHD coach to help keep the person accountable. Imagine trying to remember what you didn't remember so you can try to remember it when your rememberer muscle is broke. It's almost as hard to understand as that sentence. It is nearly impossible for someone with ADHD to keep themselves accountable for something. The role of the ADHD coach is to find out what the person is trying to get better at and be their accountability partner. The reason for using an ADHD coach instead of say a family member or friend is because the coach is intentionally trained in the intricacies of the ADHD mind. They understand the impact of self-esteem on a person's ability to do something. They realize that just because the person failed at something doesn't mean they don't care about it, it just means they didn't succeed at it and just because they did it yesterday doesn't mean they will be able to do it today. The coach helps the person with ADHD analyze what went wrong when they did fail at something, kicking them out of old self-loathing habits and helping to start a new language that will re-inforce success instead of failure.

The process is to analyze what stops a person with ADHD from succeeding at what they want to do, keeping in mind that part of it is because of the ADHD, not because they are a defective person or whatever else their mind is trying to tell them (in my case, time-management and prioritizing), analyze exactly where the process they are using breaks down in extreme detail (I get side-tracked by other projects and tell myself I need to work on that project because it is just as important as the other thing I needed to do, when in actuality, this project could wait and I should be trying to be on time for whatever appointment I have), create a strategy to avoid it next time, playing to your strengths. If you are visual, make it visual, if you are auditory, make it auditory (for me, I have a list in my Outlook calendar of what I want to get done in a day with pictures to motivate me. I also check them off each time I finish them to cater to my tactile nature. If what I am doing is not on the list, I change my focus or call my coach to verify it realy is important), apply the strategy over and over regardless of whether it is successful every time (sometimes tweaks are needed but other times, you just have to rev the engine to get it to turn over. For me, it took weeks of frustration to get this happening but it eventually clicked and I am close to having it become a habit), regularly come back to the plan and decide whether it is working. If it could be more effective, this is where tweaks can be applied (I have to do this on about a weekly basis. So far I either call Mom or Richard to do it), then rinse and repeat.

That is where I have trouble. When I complete it one day, I want to say "There, I did it" and not think about it again. The problem is, if I don't, I won't succeed on the next day's plan. That is the basic idea. You then work it over and over again for each of the issues the ADHD brain deals with, but never working more than one thing at once. Right now, I am working my time-management strategy. I am aware of an issue I have with over-planning, but it would overwhelm me to tackle both. I have to factor in my over-planning when making my day's schedule. After managing my day's schedule is a habit, I will start working on reducing the amount of time I spend planning. Once that's done, I will identify the next thing standing in my way. Strangely enough, now that I am actually being conscious of what I am spending my time doing, I am unintentionally beginning to build in time for the things I have been neglecting like exercise and nutrition. It is all working together to make me more successful.

Out of this new-found rhythm, I have realized (with my Spiritual Director's help) that what I am doing here is living out a new Rule of Life. There is a difference between a Rule of Life and a New Year's Resolution. A Rule of Life says "this activity or idea or habit is important to me. I am going to change my lifestyle to accomodate and reflect it" whereas a New Year's Resolution says "This Year I am going to do X". The resolution doesn't affect the value system and doesn't guide other principles in your life. I have decided to write my Rule of Life here where others can keep me accountable to it. Here goes.

 I am going to use my life to follow the path that God shows me no matter where it leads. I will do my best to use virtues like goodness, kindness, self-control, honesty, mercy and justice (some of the characteristics of God himself) to guide the decisions I make. I will make sure to set aside the time I need to take care of my own body because if I do not, it will shorten the amount of time I am here to serve God. I will look at myself in the mirror and speak with honesty and truth about what I see, remembering grace that God has granted along with accountability and repentance. I will do my best to be the prism that God uses to refract the light of His love to shine abundantly on those around me.

So there it is. Next step is to see where that takes me. Ithink I have an idea, but that's a conversation for another day.