Opera and Financial Planning, an unlikely pair
This summer, everything is changed.
We linger here in this maddening limbo between trying hard to explain what has just happened, and not having an especially clear idea of what is to come. “When can we all go back to ‘normal,’?” we ask, when we probably should be asking “what will the new ‘normal’ look like?”
For me, ‘normal’ was full of hard work, but also full of joy and adventure. Spending parts of my year gallivanting around the world singing with orchestras and opera companies, experiencing new places, making new friends, offering beautiful music to eager audiences. Other parts of my year were made up with giving voice lessons, creating new learning experiences for young musicians with my peers, and finding new ways to summon art and honesty from the young singers in my world.
But, beginning in March, everything came to a standstill. Theaters closed, orchestras stopped playing, singers stopped being able to sing in the company of others. Voice lessons were relegated to online-only platforms, and that is where they will remain until such time that we can safely emerge from hiding and be together once again.
Faced with myriad cancelations of singing engagements and travel and the coveted remnants of my ‘former’ life, I realized that I had problems to solve: how could I reinvent my existence in ways that could recover some of my lost income, and how could I emerge from this lengthy Life-Lockdown without the burden of deep regrets for how I had squandered the time? Oh, yes, the temptations of Netflix and pizza delivery linger to this day, but I am grateful for the self-discipline that learning the art of singing instilled within me, as it has come in so handy in other parts of my life. Who knew that self-discipline would be what saved me during a global pandemic?
So, I headed online. First to the well-known platform of EDx, where I found courses on Buddhism and Nutrition to satisfy some long-held curiosities within me. And then I migrated to two online courses offered through the University where I, myself, teach; one course in Financial Planning and another in Entrepreneurship.
Ah, the humility! Finding myself a student again after a quarter of a century away! But, after I bungled my way through learning how to function as a student in a formal online learning platform, I found that I was overjoyed with the learning. Some things served as reminders of bits of knowledge I gathered long ago, and some things were utterly new. And the journey has now twisted in unexpected ways, tying me back to the days 25 years ago when I worked as a financial planner for clients of a well-known insurance company. At the time, though I found my nature ill-suited to a life in sales, I relished the counseling aspect that was crucial to my success in helping clients plan for their financial security. And, amazingly, I have had cause to use those financial planning skills more and more in recent years as I dedicate more of my time to preparing young artists to embark on their own careers. Young musicians in school are not taught the skills they will need to care for their careers from a financial and business standpoint, and I have had many occasions to offer some stop gap classes to help them at least learn what they don’t know.
So, all of a sudden, while studying for the final exam of my financial planning class, covering insurances and investment and tax planning, I found a seed of desire growing within me, to come full circle and to prepare once again to sit for the national CFP (Certified Financial Planner) Board exam that I had taken one time and not passed so many years ago. Now, with little but unexpected time on my hands and no other plans, it suddenly seems possible to endure the rigorous study required to prepare for such an intellectual hurdle.
The exam is in November, 2020. I have approximately 7000 pages of textbook reading to do, multiple practice exams, 10 different synchronous lectures to sit through, and countless flash cards to flash. But, I will get it done. I will get it done because I need to feel useful; I need to feel that I am helping others; I need to feel that I am progressing, not regressing, global pandemic or no. And, even at 50 years old, I am not too old to learn, and I am much too young to retreat to the comfort of my couch while the world rages on fire around me.
