That Nasty Little Voice

Has anyone ever told you you couldn't do something? Have you been told you are a failure and need to re-direct your energies? If you're anything like me, that nasty little voice pops up into your head and eventually you start believing it.

I have always been very gifted musically. There really hasn't been anything I can't do. Ever since I was little I dreamed about composing. My mom tells me I would make up songs on the playground and perform them for my family.

In college, I couldn't wait to take my composition class and become a good or at least functional composer! Until my composition professor became that nasty little voice.

My composition class was the hardest class of my college career. No matter what I wrote, I could not please my professor. I remember meetings in his office where he would tell me how I had no talent in composing and was impossible. He never used those exact words and never meant to be cruel, but...

The brightest day of my college career was oddly in composition class. I worked so so sooo hard on an arrangement of my favorite Christmas song, trying desperately to get back in my professor's good graces. At my weekly office visit, he told me I was doing great. He praised my song in front of the whole class and made us all play through it several times. I was so excited when I saw the A on the cover! Or even a B!

C-?!?! Yep, worst grade in the class yet and worse than everyone around me. What the heck?! My best got me a C-.

I decided that day that I should just give up composing.

Yet all of a sudden I'm feeling very pricked to get at it again. I direct a children's choir and have found that all of the musicals being published are stupid, cliche, and doctrinally weak if not crazy. For quite some time now, I have been passionate about writing my own musicals.

I was planning on giving out the music portion to a friend, however that fell through. I also gave away the script to my husband because he's much better at that sort of thing. Now I'm left with the music myself and feeling like I really need to just do it. But that nasty little voice says I can't!

I know that I am no Handel or Mozart or even Coldplay, but maybe I can at least do an adequate job. Maybe I can do this. I feel like I should. I guess it's time to punch that nasty voiced professor in the face!