The Delicate Tuba Player

I would just like to say a few things about goals and to-do lists here. 

I've always avoided this type of thing. I would make a list of things I wanted to accomplish. I would get about 2 out of 37 of them checked off. I would feel like a failure. I would tell myself, "Michelle, you shouldn't even try to make lists. You are jinxing yourself and calling in the powers of the universe to thwart you every time you make a list of what you want to do!"  I actually felt like I was cursing myself more than helping myself. 

It was the same thing with goals. I would sit down and write these lofty things that I dreamed of coming true! I would imagine them, envision them, anticipate them, FEEL them being true, just like all the self-help books I had read. And.....wah, wah. The goals wouldn't even begin to come to fruition. More disappointment. More "accepting" of the "way the world works." 

And yet, I can't stop. None of us can ever stop. We actually cannot say "I'm good where I am" and remain, as much as we want to. Even if we perceive any changes in ourselves, the world changes around us, and then we have to adapt. We don't ever get to stay. 

It occurred to me that goals might be sort of like when I decided to play the tuba my senior year of high school. 

I think I've told this story before, but it bears repeating. So, I played bass clarinet in marching band all through high school, until my very last year, when I wanted a challenge! I decided that I would like to play a new instrument, and when I thought of what would be the most beneficial, I had this glorious revelation! If I played something HUGE  and cumbersome, like the tuba, I would look "dainty" and "slight"  next to it. I had always been concerned that my weight had kept boys from being attracted to me, especially compared  next to my beautiful half Native American friend who was about 4 inches taller and 50 pounds lighter. I was always just grasping frantically at what I could do to make myself stand out next to her, when I felt so chubby and average.

I love my younger self for hatching this plan. It's still funny to me that I honestly imagined that playing a tuba would make me sexy. I think that might be an oxymoron. ;) Yet, I remember being a teenager and laying there in bed at night before competitions, imagining myself proudly gliding around the football field in my formations, while scores of handsome, intelligent, witty, cultured, almost-men sat in the stands with their jaws slack and their attention riveted on how RADIANT that gorgeous tuba player was!!! Wow.....next to that huge spit-valve clogged tuba.....that girl just looks soo.....skinny!!  (and I think it goes without saying that my pubescent, Jane Austen fueled fantasies also featured these men in breeches and coat-tails, clapping their hands and exclaiming "Capital! Capital!" in roguish British accents!)

*sigh* Do you guys see why I build corsets for a living? 

Ah, here we are. Photographic evidence. See? I told you. 

Well, friends. I can't say my plan worked. I can't say my dreams came true. Who would have even thought that it would actually REPEL boys? Certainly not teenage me. 

And yet.....

I had more fun than I had ever had in my life. I was challenged every day. I had imagined SO hard that I was beautiful, delicate and fine in my tubarific trills that I almost started to feel that way. Despite the outward appearances, I still held fast. And you know, it's the feelings that matter anyhow. We don't do anything for the actual thing. We do it for the feelings that we imagine that thing will acquire for us. 

Imagining wonderful things for our lives almost gives us that feeling without us even having to do the work! That excitement, that thrill of the unknown and the hoped for.....that is sometimes more delicious that the end result itself. I know we have all wanted something fiercely until we actually had it, and then the magic was somehow lost.  Is the magic in the yearning? 

I now have this wonderful story to tell you from my life, and it's integral to who I am today. I still get out there and strut my stuff in a big, sometimes uncomfortably non-conformist way. I still probably imagine myself as more of a bad-A than I actually am.....and that's totally okay.  Those goals and checklists and tasks help us to keep aspiring, changing and dreaming. And I heard something that I loved the other day. There was a guy in a podcast, and he just said something like, "You've never failed if you're still in the game."  Oh....yeah.....I guess so. I didn't give up. I can't give up, because I am always changing and evolving. I'm still in the game. 

And I look very dainty doing it.