It's hard to know how to start writing an entry at the moment. Is it "business as usual", or is the world as we know it in the process of imploding? Probably a bit of both, really.
Normally even-tempered folks are on a short-fuse, stores are all promoting sales, coupons and discounts like their survival depends on it (which it very well may) and it's impossible even to do a quick check of the email without another barrage of panic-stricken headlines (whether media-inflated or genuinely to-be-alarmed-about getting increasingly difficult to judge). There's been plenty of bad news in the opera world this past week as some of the country's largest companies start to face the poor economic outlook, and it's hard not to wonder "what next"?
Yet, at the same time, it's all very much the same - it's audition season (thankfully I still seem to have had opportunities to be heard by companies who are unfamiliar with my work, thus NEW opportunities), the holidays are nearly upon us and there's an almost gritty determination among friends and colleagues to keep things as normal as possible.
And yet.
Despite discouraging news from friends and colleagues, surrounded by a sense of everybody wondering, "what next?", I have decided that the only way forward through this mess is solidarity. We (collective we) ARE all in this together; everybody's probably going to get hurt one way or another, but perhaps a bit of Dunkirk spirit and solidarity will ultimately make it better than getting sucked into an atmosphere of panic and blame, an atmosphere I already seem to sense around us.
As I said previously, this post at the Next 100 Pounds pretty much sums it up for me. Mindfulness. Which is not the same as deprivation. Just as being aware does not have to mean being afraid.
Normally even-tempered folks are on a short-fuse, stores are all promoting sales, coupons and discounts like their survival depends on it (which it very well may) and it's impossible even to do a quick check of the email without another barrage of panic-stricken headlines (whether media-inflated or genuinely to-be-alarmed-about getting increasingly difficult to judge). There's been plenty of bad news in the opera world this past week as some of the country's largest companies start to face the poor economic outlook, and it's hard not to wonder "what next"?
Yet, at the same time, it's all very much the same - it's audition season (thankfully I still seem to have had opportunities to be heard by companies who are unfamiliar with my work, thus NEW opportunities), the holidays are nearly upon us and there's an almost gritty determination among friends and colleagues to keep things as normal as possible.
And yet.
Despite discouraging news from friends and colleagues, surrounded by a sense of everybody wondering, "what next?", I have decided that the only way forward through this mess is solidarity. We (collective we) ARE all in this together; everybody's probably going to get hurt one way or another, but perhaps a bit of Dunkirk spirit and solidarity will ultimately make it better than getting sucked into an atmosphere of panic and blame, an atmosphere I already seem to sense around us.
As I said previously, this post at the Next 100 Pounds pretty much sums it up for me. Mindfulness. Which is not the same as deprivation. Just as being aware does not have to mean being afraid.
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