|
Hey, here's your Weekly Rx. No filler, I promise.
Words Worth Keeping
"The most daring thing is to create stable communities in which the terrible disease of loneliness can be cured."
— Kurt Vonnegut, in a commencement speech from 1974, decades before anyone called loneliness an epidemic
Not the Denver truck. A later one. There have been a few.
This Week
Nobody tells you what happens after you win. The audition world points every light at the moment your name gets called, then goes quiet about the part where you load a truck and drive your whole life somewhere you've never lived.
I did that four times. Charleston, Dallas, Denver, and finally Los Angeles, every one of those moves in a 26-foot U-Haul, the biggest truck they rent. Four wins, and the same thing waiting behind each one: a life starting over at zero. New streets, new hall, new colleagues, and a history that stayed behind in the old city.
Being the new person is a job on top of the job. Names to learn, first impressions to make, small talk in every hallway, and none of it optional. That performance spends exactly the energy you'd need to build a life outside the hall. If you're an introvert, you know the math: you come home from a full day of being new and there's nothing left to go be new somewhere else.
The easiest friendships to make are with your colleagues. They're also the people watching your tenure. You can be friendly with everyone and still not fully exhale around anyone.
So you sit in a city you fought a decade to reach, and some nights it's quiet enough that a question creeps in: did I make a mistake? I remember that question. I can also tell you it was lying.
The Prescription
The loneliness is a moving cost, not a verdict. It isn't evidence you chose wrong. It's the bill for the life you actually wanted, and everyone who ever won has paid it. They just don't say so out loud from the new apartment.
Musicians spend their whole lives alone in a room. That's the skill that got you the job, and it's the same habit that will keep you alone in the new city. The room already did its job. Step out of it.
So treat building a life the way you'd treat building technique: small, aimed, repeatable. Pick one standing thing a week that has nothing to do with the orchestra. A run group, a class, the same coffee shop until they know your order. Roots grow from repetition, same as everything else you're good at.
Inside the hall, be friendly with everybody and patient about the rest. The deeper friendships tend to arrive after tenure, when everyone can finally exhale. Let them take their time.
It's a moving cost. Not a verdict.
If you just won a job and the new city is quieter than you expected, hit reply and tell me which city. I've done this four times. I read every one.
Happy practicing,
Chris @ Honesty Pill Coaching
Something land? Something miss? Hit reply. I read them.
| 
