This is me singing. This is more scary than telling people what I weigh.

Remember a few posts back when I wrote about feeling so unworthy of being in graduate school and how I have always felt like the underdog when it comes to singing?

It took me almost a year to even LISTEN to my second graduate recital and I still can't bring myself to listen to my first recital.

One thing I keep realizing is how hard I am on myself. I have the most adorable piano student who is so hard on herself. Every recital is a disappointment for her if she makes a mistake and I am always so proud of her because of her progress. It's so hard to convince her that she did good.

I saw myself in her at the last recital and just wanted to hug her and look her in the eyes and say "Just look how far you have come!!!" I saw how much she was beating herself up and it dawned on me that I do the very same thing.

What I am about to do is something I have tried to do for about 2 months. I have this fear that once people hear me sing they will critique every single note just like I do. They will hear that my technique is still a work in progress. They will hear the differences in the tone of my registers. They will hear that I go out of tune and sometimes my vibrato gets wobbly and they will hear that sometimes it takes me a minute to get going without sounding nervous.

BUT

Part of me learning to love myself and accept myself is to accept that I don't have to be perfect and it's OK if I am a work in progress. See, I happen to be hard on myself in more areas than just my weight. For your listening pleasure I am inserting a few tracks from my final graduate recital. I might post a few more every so often, but here are a few that we recorded on garage band so the quality is not professional.

This one is from Handel's Messiah, "Rejoice Greatly, O Daughter of Zion" It's a beast to sing and now that this is up I feel a little narcissistic with a slideshow of myself, don't judge me, I didn't want to re-do it.

This one is from Vivaldi's Gloria entitled "Domine Deus" The photos were all taken on my hiking adventures in the Tetons.