Serendipity

Looking back at my last post, and the very few I wrote prior to it, makes it seem like I really haven't been here all that long.  It was less than a year ago that I started planning my move to New York, and yet I feel like it was a decade ago.  So much has changed.  I've doubled my network of friends - band friends, choir friends, work friends - as well as my extended network of "friends of friends" - this city is an amazing place to network.  I feel like I'm back in college, with a 6,700-mile campus and 18.9 million colleagues.  I can't talk up this city enough.  :)

The most recent change in my life will probably be the most important.  I traveled to the ACDA National Conference in Chicago two months ago with my choir, and it kick-started the realization that I truly am wasting my time by not trying to figure out my career.  I had half-heartedly gone through my options for a career in music up until that point - music education (nope), church music director (nope), performer (no way)... what else could there be?  Um, duh.  I'm in New York.  I knew there were other options, but I had somewhere along the line ruled them out due to lack of qualifications.  My experience is in sales.  Who sells music?

*ding! ding! ding!*

And that was my moment of realization that I could tap into an entirely different market.  Suddenly, I had a plan.  I would start with the major classical music publishers - Boosey & Hawkes, Carl Fischer, G. Schirmer, among many others - and then move onto record labels - Sony, EMI, Capitol Records.  There is a gigantic network of businesses in the music industry that I hadn't even considered.  I spent my weekend getting addresses and contacts, writing cover letters, assembling it all in a professional presentation.  I organized it all by location and set my alarm early for Monday morning, with a plan to stop by at least four publishers a day and drop off my resume in person.  At the end of the night on Sunday, I went back to the fine arts career website that I have used many times in my search... and lo and behold, the very first publisher on my list for Monday morning had just posted a job opening for a Sales Administrator, with an exact description of my qualifications and background.

Monday afternoon, I received an email from that same company's HR department - I set up an interview for Tuesday.  At the end of my interview, we set up a second interview with the company's CEO for the following day.  By the end of business on Wednesday, I had received a job offer, put in my notice at my temp agency, and started training for my new position the following morning.  This should go in the dictionary for the definition of a "New York Minute." Within less than a week of writing that very cover letter, I was sitting in my new cubicle, surrounded by twenty new co-workers, all with a mutual love for music.  It was - and still is - absolutely surreal.

Now begins the adjustment to a new work schedule, the search for a new apartment, and a new balancing act of all of the close friendships I've made so far.  A year ago, I was excited with the prospect of a new city, a new challenge - I wasn't afraid.  And now, a year later, I am still just as excited, if not more, to see the possibilities and realize that I am totally in control of my own destiny.  I have been defeated this year in many aspects.  I will admit to having let certain things weigh on the way that I've been living - but I just needed that extra push to make it over this hill.

I can't help but have the same quote I used a year ago...

So I took what I wanted and put it out of my reach

I wanted to pay for my successes with all my defeats

And if Heaven was all that was promised to me

Why don't I pray for death?

-Dawes