Work vs Self

What makes work, work? I mean, what makes work a job, a task or chore, and what makes work something more?

I’ve been thinking about this a lot in the last year or so; I’ve gradually realized that, despite my many-years-long dedication to performing and teaching classical music, it had become “work”. I was no longer deriving the same sense of satisfaction from my activities, and in fact was beginning to resent them, the time they took, and the low “return-of-investment” I felt I received, financially and otherwise, when a gig or teaching session was completed. It took me awhile to realize I was burned out. I was exhausted, feeling like I’d spent several years trying to establish myself as a performer and teacher only to finally realize that, despite all my efforts, I didn’t think I’d really made it. I couldn’t get invited to play with the local symphony despite being eminently qualified and perfectly capable. I would line up a gig, be told I’d done a great job, and never be called again by that entity. I feel I’ve done better as a teacher, especially as a private lesson teacher. But even in that realm I never made it past being an adjunct professor, a part-timer, cobbling together half- and quarter-time jobs to make a living.

I’m an excellent performer and a solid, experienced teacher. But I’ve never been the best networker; self-promotion might as well give me hives; and putting in all this work was really starting to wear on me. As a result, I decided to apply for a job in classical radio (I was hosting part-time for the station already), looking for something that would provide more stability for my family and I and hopefully let me relinquish some of the part-time work so I could have more time back. I got the job as a music director, curating what music the radio station plays, hosting a weekday show, and overseeing the music library.

What I found was that I loved it. I didn’t just love the job, which combined my lifelong love of classical music, my extensive training as a performer, and my abilities as an organizer and administrator of things and people; I felt free in way I’d not experienced before, despite going to an office most days (I do get to work from home some) and working a “9-to-5” type job. I discovered a work environment that was welcoming, nurturing, and open to my ideas, and colleagues who were committed to creating a culture that was about building each other up. I didn’t feel like I was missing information, or missing subtext, or missing the inside joke all the time, or that I had to play weird insular political games or suck up to anyone to get ahead. It was refreshing, and a real eye-opener.

Without meaning to, I began to realize that, while I will always love playing my instrument and I have enjoyed aspects of teaching it for a long time, doing those things as my job, as my career, was causing me to struggle mentally and emotionally. A lot of resentment had built up around the struggles I faced: never being sure I was going to be able to pay all of my bills, feeling like I was giving away all the time I should be spending with my family to work, becoming extremely frustrated with the idiotic gatekeeping I was running into. What had been my dream for most of my life, quite literally, had become something far less shiny and aspirational.

There were other things going on as well as I began to face the need to make a major professional change. Our oldest son was born in March 2021, 12 weeks early after I developed preeclampsia (dangerously high blood pressure). 3 months early. He weighed 2 lbs 7 oz and fit into our two hands. As it turned out, he was (and is!) a fighter, and after having emergency bowel surgery at 5 days old, he healed and started checking off milestones in the NICU. We were incredibly blessed to have such a strong, stubborn kid, and to live in a city with an excellent children’s hospital. After 58 days in the NICU we were able to bring him home. Today he’s 2 years old and you’d never know he was a preemie.

Because all of my work was part-time, I had no benefits, which meant no leave. I basically just stopped working for several months; I had to heal from the dangerous condition I’d developed and an emergency C-section, and we were visiting the NICU daily to see our child and do what we could to love on him and encourage him to grow. This, by the way, was in the midst of the COVID pandemic, so my husband and I were the only ones who could visit our son in the NICU—no grandparents, aunts and uncles, or cousins. No sharing the burdens and the joys. Don’t get me wrong, we took gazillions of pictures and talked incessantly about all the little “wins” each day, but it’s just not the same as watching your kid be held by their grandparent, and be able to go outside, and learn about the world beyond tubes and wires and rubber gloves. Our own son didn’t know his parents’ faces until he was 2 months old because we always had masks on in the hospital. When we got to bring him home he was staring at us—it was the first time he'd seen us without them.

Financially, the only reason we made it was because our parents stepped in and helped us. I took a $20,000 pay cut in 2021 because of how our son arrived, nearly half of my annual income. We had a rather large hospital bill, just for my 6-day stay. We never actually saw the total for our son’s care because, thank God, he qualified for Medicare as a preemie; it would have been in the hundreds of thousands. As I began teaching again that summer (and in the fall when my adjunct positions started up again), and saying yes again to gigs, it’s not that people didn’t ask me how we were doing—it was a feeling that I was replaceable, that my absence had made no difference professionally, that crept in and really started eating away at me.

Once I started working full-time in radio about a year later, I finally had the financial stability (benefits! A retirement account! I didn’t have to buy health insurance on the government marketplace!) to not be working 50-60 hours every week. I was still teaching one college job and my private students, but I was also feeling really uncomfortable about it. Then we got pregnant again.

We were thrilled to be able to have a second child and, knowing what we went through the first time around, we and my doctor were very careful the second time. But working more than full-time with a year-old son at home and being pregnant was not really sustainable. I finally decided to quit teaching completely, at least for a while, in January 2023. I also said no to several gigs I would otherwise have taken. I knew I’d made the right choice when I realized the magnitude of my relief.

Gradually this late winter and spring, I realized what I was feeling was burnout. I haven’t touched my instrument in six months and so far I don’t miss it. I don’t miss teaching, especially resenting the time it took away from other work or from my family. And I certainly don’t miss being an adjunct professor and getting paid peanuts to do the same work as tenured faculty members who made many times more money per hour than I did. (The adjunct/part-time/contingent faculty system in this country should be seen as indentured servitude. It’s appalling and ridiculous. But that’s a whole separate blog post.)

I also had my hands full with a big project for the radio station that had to be finished before I went on maternity leave. (We made our deadline!) Baby #2 and I made it safely to 37 weeks and our younger son was born at the end of April. We were better prepared for the risks with this pregnancy so I’m doing much better now, postpartum, than I was the first time around—and our son is an absolute joy. I’ve had a lot of time to think about who I am, and what I’m doing, and where my life might go from here. I’m slowly making peace with my life looking different than I thought it would, even just a few years ago. I’m beginning to be excited about the possibilities in front of me, and the fact that I get to define who I am and what I do.