“Round Peg In A Square Hole”

The noise of how I don’t belong here at work is really loud some days. Again, it’s not a feeling of not belonging like I don’t fit in or am not accepted (although my self-sabotaging brain does feed me that nonsense, too). It’s a feeling of I know this isn’t what I was meant to do, and trying to do it makes me go bonkers. I am the round peg, this day job is the square hole. Just as you can take a hammer and slam a round peg into a square hole, I can force myself to fit in it to this scheme of things, but it is unnatural for me to the point of absurdity. And to be forced into the square hole means I must reshape myself almost beyond recognition.

Maybe that’s why work hurts so bad—my soul is being mashed up and distorted.

This week I went to an orchestra performance. I’m so glad I did. I got to see one of my colleagues conduct a piece, and one of the other pieces on the concert was Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade. That’s such a beautiful piece. It was definitely inspiring; got me thinking about writing a similar type of thing, only instead of adapting ‘1001 Arabian Nights’, I would use Ray Bradbury’s ‘Illustrated Man’. Maybe that’s the genesis of a piece to write for a doctorate?

When I first started my classes this fall, my composition professor had some great advice. He talked about looking at the whole of my master’s degree program. Instead of writing a thesis, what I will be doing is composing a ‘significant’ work. I decided quickly and easily that I want to write a piece for full orchestra, and so each of my other pieces I’ll be working on through the semesters will be building towards that.

Hearing the full orchestra play was amazing. I love that sound. And it was inspiring, and felt so good, so right. I’d listen to the pieces as they were performed and hear the changes and the compositions moving through their different shapes and colors, motives and progressions, and I got this big grin on my face. It was such a joy.

Earlier in the evening, I’d talked with a performer and I think I’ve lined up the last player I need in order to have one of my pieces performed on a concert coming up next month, and that put me in an almost giddy state. I’m still excited from it.

Maybe that’s why work is becoming more of a challenge for me. As I realign myself back to who I really am, to the life I was on track for before . . . life happened, it’s becoming more and more difficult to keep up this façade of pretending like this day job thing, place, whatever is somewhere that it’s appropriate for me to be.