I just want this to exist. Whether it's through skool or Facebook is largely immaterial to me. The downside of Facebook is that it requires a Facebook account and logging into Facebook, with all the negatives that brings. Also with this, I get email notifications I can quickly peruse. With Facebook, I either need to manually visit the group or I'm at the mercy of whatever the algorithm thinks is notification-worthy. If there are advantages to a Facebook group, I will happily join that.

The whole "deciding you want to do this and why" thing is so important. I'll share a story. When I was a sophomore at BU they had a celebrity master class series. They brought in Renee Fleming, Denyce Graves, and others. The most impactful one for me though was Jerry Hadley. He was regarded as the American Pavarotti. Had a decent Broadway career and an extraordinary opera career. Had the most memorable class of them all IMO, got the most out of his teaching. At the end of it he sang for us, the only one to do so. He sang Without a Song. And it was really bad. Like I kinda look back with regret at that moment because I just stared at him with this look of disappointed surprise and I remember him locking eyes with me and seeing. I later learned he was having medical issues and he basically couldn't sing. His wife was divorcing him, he had severe financial issues. Several months later he died a slow agonizing death, having attempted suicide with an air rifle to the head that mortally wounded him but didn't kill him immediately. I remember thinking that this was a man who achieved everything I ever hoped - an incredible career in opera and musical theatre, and when his body failed him, he was depressed and destroyed to the point of suicide. One of the things he said in that master class was "If you can imagine yourself doing anything other than this, you should do that thing, because this career is hard and unforgiving." Clearly he meant it. And that was when I decided that as badly as I wanted to be a singer, I should not put all of my eggs in that basket. Becoming a great performer is one of the most important things to me, but I've tried to make sure my whole life doesn't hinge on it, because I have so little control over its success. Hope that anecdote is helpful to someone.

I mean, at BU, I legitimately struggled with ear training and learning music. The ear training program they were teaching at the time (which used "fixed do" and had the unusual requirement of making every variation of C "do," every variation of D "re," etc., so "Do Re" could be anything ranging from a tritone (Cbb to D##) to a unison) did me no favors in learning solfege or intervals, and I wasn't really in a position to know what a better approach would be. The head of the voice department at the time, Jerrold Pope, maintained I was "musically retarded" and my pitch issues were "unresolvable." He advocated kicking me out of the voice performance program, but my grades were too good. Still made my life hell while I was there though. This was part of what motivated my transfer to the University of Connecticut to finish my degree, and why I was so depressed and anxious to sing for years after graduating. Took years of therapy to get the courage to sing again.

Thank you Dan. Settling in after my first rehearsal. The leads are mostly Equity folks, and they're good. The ensemble is mostly BoCo grads and are generally really good too. This was the most nervous I've been for a long time. But I got through it. And dare I say I don't think I was unworthy of being in that group. Also I'm now understudying both Emile AND Captain Brackett. Sooo many lines to learn. Anyway, keeping going. Goddamn. If I survive this I'm going to be a different man on the other side. Thanks again for the shoutout.

My techniques to deal with procrastination: - Reverse "surf the urge" - taken from the technique used to deal with diet temptations. Like you just said, negotiate with yourself for a smaller commitment. "I will do this for 5 minutes. If I want to stop after that, I can." And honor that promise. - Make it selfish. A lot of procrastination is a sort of passive-aggressive resistance to the "have tos" in life. If you can reframe a "have to" into a "want to so I can get what I want," that helps. "I want to practice so I can sing this song as beautifully as I aspire to be able to sing it." - Use fear. Think about the "I do not want" that's at the other side of procrastinating. "I do not want to make an ass of myself at this audition/rehearsal." "I do not want to humiliate myself in front of my friends." The fear of that often motivates me to put tremendous effort into whatever I'm procrastinating.