Sometimes finding your way back to yourself means letting go of the things that no longer make you feel like you.
I’m back! (Again.) Did you miss Flute Friday?
Burnout is now CANCELED. I’m back to my ambitious, creative, slightly drained—but in a good way—flute-playing, Dr. G. flute-baddie self!
What I learned this past year is that sometimes saying no to the thing that sucks your life force from you on a consistent basis, without giving you much in return, is a sign from the Universe that you need to reprioritize.
If your energy is suffering—as well as your health and your general attitude—a change-up is likely needed.
The hard part? It takes some honesty.
You have to face the thing that doesn’t serve you any longer, like an old pair of ill-fitting shoes. (I’m looking at you, fake-leather, pointed-toe black shoes that left super-painful blisters on my feet after only one wear.)
It’s okay to remove what doesn’t work for you.
It doesn’t make you a bad person. It doesn’t make you wrong. And it certainly doesn’t make you less of a flutist.
One of the missions I have always had with this Flute Friday blog is to talk about the stuff that we avoid. In today’s blog, I’m focusing less on what that thing—or things—is that I’ve thrown by the wayside (or am in the process of tossing even today), and more on how I am finding my way back to me.
Or, in other words:
How I am finding my fierce.
And how you may find your fierce as well—even after seasons in your career when you haven’t felt so great about your flute-playing world.
Being a Flutist Is HARD
Let’s give the elephant in the room the stage for a minute so it can shout bombastically from its trunk:
Being a flutist is…wait for it…VERY DIFFICULT.
And being a flutist doesn’t have to look the same for all of us.
I was reminded of this recently at a local orchestra audition. I hadn’t thrown my name into the audition hat for quite some time and had definitely avoided serious orchestral auditions for reasons I’ve discussed in past Flute Friday posts.
I’ve become a bit jaded when it comes to auditions.
Why is it that in most other industries, when people apply for a job, hiring committees look at a candidate’s entire employment history to gauge readiness for a position, while in orchestral auditions, applicants can be judged solely on a less-than-five-minute snapshot of the great ambiguous blob that we call “our flute playing”?
As an HR analyst in my side-gig life, that just doesn’t seem like a particularly good—or fair—system. Definitely not one that feels sustainable in our world today. You may be cutting yourself off from actually hiring the best flutist for the job.
But I digress.
Enter: The Shiny New Piccolo
I actually had no plans to audition until I returned from the NFA Convention with a shiny new piccolo.
I was ready to show it off.
I was ready to play the heck out of Tchaikovsky and let that new piccolo sound SHINE on the Vivaldi.
So I quickly sent out my CV, woodshed my orchestral excerpts, and jumped into the great cattle call with nervous curiosity:
Was it the same vibe as last time?
Have things changed?
Have I changed as an auditioner?
Let’s see how this goes!
I wasn’t the only one who had this idea. At the audition site, I ran into many old friends and quickly made new friends who seemed to have the same let’s-give-this-another-try mindset.
We all went in with an open mind, gave it our best, and…
Sadly, we did not hear our names called for Round Two.
Photo: Gilles Gravier / Unsplash
Sometimes our biggest challenges as musicians happen when we step outside the practice room.
When an Excerpt You Know Falls Apart
Something odd happened to me in that audition room.
Except…it isn’t really odd at all, because in reality, it happens to so many of us, regardless of instrument.
An excerpt I have been playing for literally decades—Mendelssohn’s Scherzo from A Midsummer Night’s Dream—whose breathing plan I have finally mastered, crumbled into a sad pile of missed notes, terrible sound, and middle-school-level breathing issues.
I don’t understand exactly what happened when I entered that room.
It was a stark white room with a matching intimidating judging screen. My bully of an inner critic shouted loudly:
“You can’t do this. You don’t have what it takes.”
And it started shouting before I had even set my music on the stand.
I have studied performance anxiety to a tee and felt completely in control—until those doors opened and I stepped into a strange little time warp where my confidence was stripped away almost instantly.
The first couple of excerpts were so terrible that I didn’t even get the chance to play my new piccolo—the thing I was most excited to show off.
I left feeling defeated, as I have felt so many times before after orchestral auditions.
Until the drive home…
Somewhere on the drive home, with the windows down and the ’80s music blasting, my perspective changed.
The Drive Home
I had an epiphany driving down those Northern California agricultural roads, with my ’80s music blasting and the windows rolled down.
Auditioning for orchestras has never given me a sense of true flute fierceness.
Or, to put it more simply:
I don’t feel like my best self.
So…why do it?
That question changed the way I looked at the entire experience.
Because there were actually two great things that came out of this audition:
- The prep work.
- The realization that my own mindset was blocking my fierceness.
The Prep Work Was Already a Win
Let’s talk about the prep work for a minute.
I seasoned my brand-new piccolo with some seriously difficult repertoire.
I learned its capabilities and its limitations. I learned how best to deal with those pesky high F-sharps and what different trick fingerings sounded like on this particular model.
I learned how the instrument is naturally tuned and what adjustments I can make to help different notes sing beautifully in both slower and faster passages.
In other words, I met my new instrument.
And I found a new sense of fierceness as a piccolo player, whether the committee got to hear it for themselves or not.
Their loss!
Also, after several unsuccessful attempts over the summer to schedule dedicated, super-focused practice time, the audition gave me a goal to prioritize. It gave me awesome motivation to practice as much as I could in the limited time I had.
Like I tell my students all the time:
I had already won something.
I became a better flutist simply by preparing for the audition.
Photo: Nishal Pavithran / Unsplash
Sometimes the preparation itself is the win.
And Then There’s Mindset…
This is the big one.
I used affirmations. I practiced my performance-anxiety techniques. I tried to convince myself that I didn’t care about the end result.
But…
Those things weren’t completely genuine.
I still felt that ugly demon-monster of doubt, cloaked, of course, in negativity.
Somewhere underneath everything, I thought this was something I should be doing.
That auditioning was my “duty” as a:
Professional Flutist Look at Me I Am So Serious About Flute All of the Time, 24/7.
UHG! NO!
That is not the Dr. G. brand, am I right????????
I forgot who I was during this audition.
More importantly, I forgot what makes me feel fierce and what makes me love this crazy flute life.
At my very core, Dr. G. is a super-awesome flute teacher and a flutist with a sound larger than life.
One not-so-great audition—or even 100 not-so-great auditions—cannot change those things.
Auditioning, PERIOD, doesn’t change how much I believe in my students.
It doesn’t change what I have to say about music.
And it doesn’t change how blogging has helped define my flute career.
Finding My Fierceness
The moral of this story is that on the drive back from the audition, I remembered all of the things that make me feel like me rather than dwelling on the one thing that didn’t.
I found my fierceness.
So now I’m asking you:
What is your fierceness?
What makes you feel like an unstoppable force in your flute life?
How do you change your mindset when that inner critic makes an appearance—or when things don’t quite work out the way you wanted?
Maybe fierceness isn’t about succeeding at every audition, winning every job, or proving that you belong.
Maybe sometimes it’s simply about remembering who you are as a musician when nobody else gets to decide for you.
Here’s to all of us finding our fierceness—even when it disappears for a little while.
Happy Fluting!
– Dr. G.
Rachel Taylor Geier 
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