Words that sing

Last March I took the decision to at least try to bring my dreams of becoming a professional singer into reality. It felt wonderful - I was moving forward to do what I wanted to do. So it seemed like part of a perfect pattern when shortly afterwards a wonderful man came into my life, full of ideas and practical support to help me take forward my singing. I had my own ideas and strength to put my dreams out into the world, but in confronting a difficult task his support and encouragement was so welcome.

And then it all started to go wrong. In the space of one month, I had five audition rejections and some comments from my singing teacher that wounded my confidence. As my confidence faltered I turned for support to my lover. But just at the same time he started to fall apart and away from me, and did so in a way that damaged my strength and confidence even more.

So for a few months I lost the confidence to face the inevitable barrage of rejections between me and possible success as a singer. Indeed a lot of the time I could hardly sing at all for the powerful emotions welling up in me. (I wrote a post about this called the emotional power of singing a few days ago.)

For a while it felt like my whole life was falling apart simultaneously. I have learnt so much and healed so much since then, and built new confidence and strength. But I still feel unable to make progress with my singing and I can’t work out why.

Is the problem that being a professional opera singer is not right for me? (See doing what you love for a living). It’s certainly a difficult, competitive path, often lonely and fraught with rejections that feel very personal. And it’s certainly not the only creative path that I could choose - I’ve recently started being interested in changing to jazz singing, or writing, and so on.

Or is it that singing really is the right thing for me, but I still have a lot of work to do to overcome my fears?

How do I decide? Any suggestions?