Month: August 2014

personal essay draft 1

The best piece of advice on how to write a great personal essay (for law school applications) was to start writing now.

I have one month until I write my LSATs, at which point I will have one month until the deadline for law school applications for 2015.

The idea of being a lawyer was always brewing in the back of my mind, like a softly simmering sauce. Over the past six years, consumed as I was by the joint tasks of completing my undergrad at Kings and recovering from mental illness, the dream of going to law school shimmered beyond a great and terrible wall. My first task was to get over the wall. Then I would take another look at long-standing ambitions.

And suddenly, I’m twenty-seven, and thirty is looming around the corner, and I’m experiencing what I’ve been referring to as the quarter-life crisis – the panic of realizing that you are at the beginning of the period of time you always dreamed of: grown up, an adult who is living somewhere and doing something. I don’t know if I’m explaining this well; I think I do a much better job when I’m winging it on the phone to Carolyn and Ribay. But Alex has told me that everyone in their late twenties goes through this. (I immediately think of my brother and his early maturation, and doubt he will have a quarter-life crisis.)

The panic rests on a question: Is this who I want to be? Is this what I want to do? Am I satisfied with this course of life? Because at twenty-seven, there time to change directions without being too behind.

At twenty-seven there is a feeling of passing through a security gate in slow-motion, thinking, it’s not too late to turn back, but it will be soon. Before you know it you’ll be thirty, and family and marriage time will be “now”, and wrinkles will be visible from a full meter away, and I will have secured my place beyond society’s prized age group for feminine beauty and prestige. Even as I write that, I know the truth: That past my twenties, I will be wiser, more confident and powerful than ever. And thus arises my anxiety.
I am blooming into a woman free of toxic imbalances that plagued my young twenties. I am growing past the shame and pain of it all. I have this feeling of waking up to a mind as hopeful, dedicated, curious and vivacious as the one I had in high school. Only this time, I have the knowledge of the underbelly. I know what it’s like to fall, to fail, to come close to the edge. I have befriended people in the depths of their own despair. I have given up obstinate and self-destructive modes of being, but not forgotten what it is to live in an irrational web of mental illness.

It’s the time to say goodbye to dreams I will not, it turns out, pursue in my young adult life, and to take a good look at the path I am taking before I find myself at the end with sore regrets.

I do love music. I will do my best to evaluate my love for music without appealing to past egos. I am not who I once was, and she was not me. I like teaching private lessons, though I grow weary of teaching students whose lessons I don’t enjoy, for no personal gain. It’s not so much the people I don’t like, but
a) so much talking. My throat hurts at the end of the night.
b) sore neck and back from constantly sitting at a piano and singing and playing
c) sore wrists from so much playing
d) working with young children who have little interest in learning, and winning their parents’ business by ensuring the students enjoy the lesson, regardless of how poorly they continue to learn and how little they practice
e) feeling like I’m pouring my energy and effort into a lot of bottomless holes. People who don’t care like I care, don’t believe me, don’t trust me, and aren’t putting in the effort. I don’t mind trying my ASS off, every single lesson I have, but at the end of the day I know that becoming a good musician is about self-discipline, and an intrinsic joy in playing. Two things I can’t really teach, especially in half-hour slots.

There are things I love about my current career. I enjoy feeling connected to so many people on a regular basis, especially one on one. I like the problem-solving associated with individual’s challenges and needs. I like encouraging people and offering support. I like being a critic and being able to be honest about my findings. And I love the actual arts; singing and playing piano. I love performing.

I struggle with a nagging feeling that there’s something I am supposed to be doing, and it isn’t this. I wonder if this is just some coming of age (yet again, or part of the quarter-life crisis) where we acknowledge and say goodbye to the dream that we would ever reach a satisfactory destination in life, and embrace the not-knowing. I don’t really think so though. I think that’s what a hippy would answer to my questions.

I’m not searching for happiness; I’m pretty happy. I’m searching for a feeling that I’m doing something of worth. Of worth to me, and to others. Music is certainly of worth… but how will it ever give me enough money?

All stuff to think about.

Goodnight.

Posted on by Rachel Sunter 0

how do you say, like, cool

How are people saying cool these days? I want to talk about cool things without shamefully exposing my five-years-past-the-pinnacle-of-youth age.

At 27, I am feeling the teeter of having passed the brink of the hegemonic feminine ideal.

Given my indie-pop ambitions (and identity), ‘in’ words are supposed to roll off my tongue as I exhale cig smoke over a hoppy craft beer.

I remember trying swear-words out as a kid. You build yourself up to it and then drop it and hope no one knows it’s your first time. I totally did that with “dope” the other day. Kind of pussied out and tried it in a text. Went okay. Felt a little fake.

I hate the idea of traipsing behind young post-hipsters in a mockingbird dance, regurgitating slang to fit in. My vernacular has got to feel natural,  while maintaining relevance to my target music audience. Writing out these thoughts is committing a total faux-pas: talking about being cool is not cool. (A transgression I hope to mitigate by being the first to admit to it.)

Fashion does have a way of cradling me into future evolutions without too much effort on my part. A little Pinterest, Instagram, and Twitter on the bus to the studio goes a long way. But changes in language sometimes catch me off-guard, especially when I hear them from an eleven-year-old piano student at work.

Behold the spectrum of ‘cool’ words since I graduated high school.

Wicked- Awesome – Rad – Gnarly – Chill – Bomb – Boss – Badass – Bitchin – Dope

Read up on more cool words here.

Peace / Cheers / WHATEVS

Posted on by Rachel Sunter 0

contemplations on art and authenticity

Since I made my announcement to leave the band a month ago, life has been evolving at a blinding pace. Long-repressed emotions bubble up like springs, gushing out of me in dreams, waking me in the middle of the night.

Talking about the reality of it all (not me leaving – but me staying for so long) is helping to give my twenties a feeling of beginning, middle and end. Something dark has ended and I am weeks into a bright new stage, a new plain of existence.

Motivated by newfound freedom from bulimia and the band, I granted myself other long-awaited freedoms. I quit smoking cigarettes, and concurrently took a two-month break from binge-drinking, weed and any other drugs. I recognized the undeniable connection between diverse forms of self-destructive escapism, and made a personal pledge to spend time with present, sober Rachel.

[Note to the reader: Take your stigma-born, gut-wrenching reactions around the words “drugs” and “sober” away from my blog, and please recognize that many substances and behaviours – food, sex, exercise, sleep, and drugs – can be abused. My openness about these things invite the same from you.]

So far it’s been wonderful; I am sleeping well, rising early, reading lots, and spending quality time with select friends.

Self-help and revelations aside, what I really mean to write about today are my questions of authenticity and feelings of disenchantment with song-writing and the music scene.

I have spent so much time playing and writing in an oppressive, competitive, judgemental environment, that it’s hard – painful, even – to sit down and write a song from my heart. When I try, I have to swat critical thoughts away like wasps. Questions like “what is x-artist doing today to complete this kind of musical phrase?” and “how would this be received at the Seahorse” and “is that beat too last year?” overwhelm me until I throw my hands up and leave the piano.

This endless obsession with what is NEW and HIP and EDGY feels like poison. It saturates my creative mind, stifling actions, pasting momentum in dubious sludge.

Just thinking about it now is making me cry. Something so precious to me – the act of turning feelings and images into music, that I may contemplate its expression repeatedly – is tainted by a feeling of desperate insecurity.

It wasn’t always like this. Before I joined the band at twenty-one, I happily played songs alone in my bedroom, often late at night, and quietly enjoyed the creative process and its results. That was enough.

I’m sure all professional artists must combat with the temptation to please the masses. It’s just that lately I’m losing this fight. I feel like a charade, a farce, a marionette on strings, and the puppeteer is a narcissist who seeks the fleeting gratification of public approval. I know, in my heart, that popularity isn’t real. Its satisfaction isn’t lasting, doesn’t breed connection, offers no consolation to loneliness and low self-esteem.

I want to go back to a place and time where I could create music just for me. It was much easier to write when I could solely rely on my innate, uncensored sense of beauty, as a critical guide, rather then an imaginary panel of vacant hipster critics.

The temptation to recede into a shell from society until I may reemerge free of critical obsession is a strong one, but I doubt its integrity. I know people like my music… and I trust my own tastes. I’m just struggling to make my insecurities shut up. They take the form of bullies who are no longer in my life; it’s cruel and unfair that their harsh words should continue to spawn from my brain.

When I delve into these dark waters, I feel so weak, and sad, and vulnerable. It makes me wonder if I’m cut out for this profession.

*sigh* Off to the recording studio.

Posted on by Rachel Sunter 0