30 Days of Gratitude: Day 19

As I posted today on Facebook, I need to refocus my trust in God to provide what we truly need, so I think it is time to start up some thankful posting.

Today, I am thankful for being respected as a musician, teacher, and advocate for the arts. What a blessing and a dream fulfilled to be doing exactly what I'm meant to do and earning the respect of my colleagues in the process.

I have known since the age of sixteen that I want to be a professional musician and music teacher.  I have worked tirelessly for the past twenty years to make this dream a reality.

When I was in high school, I poured myself into my music and schoolwork as a means to garner recognition, awards, and scholarships.  I was determined to see that I "got out" of West Virginia and made something of myself.  As time passed and I gained more and more recognition on the national level, I realized how much my music was a part of who I was, a part of my very soul. There really was no other career path for me. I was meant to be a musician and a music teacher. That is just who I am.

Following graduation from college, I moved to Minnesota to begin my new life with The Boy.  When I moved to Minnesota, I knew no one other than my then-fiancé.  After working in the engineering and mathematics fields for the first 15 months, I was absolutely miserable.  Granted, I loved teaching College Algebra at the University of Minnesota, but it still left a bit of a hole.  I will not even go into the horrible experience I had with civil engineering and how depressing I found it as a career.  Suffice to say that civil engineering is definitely not the creative outlet I need.

While a newlywed and freshly pregnant (my honeymoon souvenir), I began to seek out new opportunities with my music.  There is a fantastic music store in the Twin Cities that hired me to teach beginning clarinet and saxophone lessons for them, and my studio began to bloom.  I became bolder in my self-promotion, and my friends and colleagues suggested me to many schools as a teacher.  Before I knew it, I found myself with a clarinet studio of 30 students per week and a waiting list.  What a huge blessing.  Performance opportunities were always available to me, as well, but my mainstay was my teaching studio.


It was quite difficult for me to leave behind the business I had spent cultivating for ten of my eleven years in Minnesota, but I was able to suggest replacement teachers with confidence.  I have begun this process anew in Maryland, and I am feeling much more confident in my ability to build another successful studio.  I have been welcomed with open arms by the county school system here, and it has given me renewed hope for future success.  While I know it will take time to build another program, I know that God is with me every step of the way.  He has lead me to so many incredible music educators already.