|
Hey, here's your Weekly Rx. No filler, I promise.
Words Worth Keeping
"Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced."
— James Baldwin, New York Times Book Review, 1962. He wasn't talking about auditions. Doesn't matter.
Cry in your coffee time. It's a real step, and it has a real end.
This Week
Two of the musicians I coach took auditions this week. Neither one advanced. Both said some version of the same sentence: it's never going to work out.
I don't have a good line for that moment. There isn't one. Anything I say in the first hour sounds like a greeting card, and they can hear it.
So mostly I let it be as bad as it is. Because it is bad. You spent months on this. You booked the flight, you took the days off, you played the excerpts three hundred times in your kitchen, and a person you will never meet listened to four minutes of it and said no.
That deserves more than "everything happens for a reason." It deserves a rotten afternoon.
The Prescription
Here's what I actually tell people, once that first day is over.
Give it a window. I call it cry in your coffee time. Pick an amount. An afternoon, two days, whatever it takes. Let it be as ugly as it wants to be inside that window. Don't be brave. Don't be philosophical. Don't post anything.
Then pay attention to what your brain says while you're in there. It will say things. Mine used to say I'm a fraud, and I always knew this was a stupid idea. Yours might say my family gave up so much for me and I wasted it.
Write those sentences down. On paper, in your own handwriting. A thought you never say out loud gets to run forever without anyone arguing back.
Then write the opposite right underneath it. If you wrote I'm a fraud, and I always knew this was a stupid idea, write I'm the real thing, and choosing this is the best decision I ever made.
Now read both out loud. Not in your head. Out loud, in your normal voice.
One of them you can say like a person stating a fact. The other one you can hear yourself performing. That's the tell. "I'm a fraud" is a feeling wearing a fact's clothes, and it falls apart the second it has to leave your mouth.
Usually the truth is neither sentence. It's the boring one in the middle: I'm working hard at something hard, and it didn't go my way this time. You don't have to believe that one yet either. You just have to notice you could say it without flinching.
And if you're on your eighth rejection in a row, I know "it didn't go my way this time" sounds like a joke.
So here's the hard part. It might not work out. There's no guarantee. The work has to be worth something besides the job, or you're paying too much for it.
But you don't know it's never. Nobody does. I've watched people quit one audition before the one they would have won.
You're allowed to feel wrecked. You're not required to believe what your brain says while you are.
Happy practicing,
Chris @ Honesty Pill Coaching
Something land? Something miss? Hit reply. I read them.
| 
