A year and a half ago, I made a bold (for me, anyway) resolution: Sing Daily. I figured that this was going to be kind of life changing for me . . . and it turns out I was right, but not for any reasons I could have guessed.
Here's how that resolution went: I sang. Pretty much daily.
I was really bad, partly because I hadn't practiced remembering words, so actually coming up with songs to sing was tricky. For a while, it was a lot of "happy birthday", and two or three songs that I made myself learn again. (These were, "Be Thou My Vision" and "If I only had a brain", which I kind of giggled at singing in juxtaposition).
Eventually, I started singing more often because songs started coming to me in various situations. I'd come home and start singing to the dog: "How much is that Doggie in the Window?", and "Where, oh where has my little dog gone?". My girl scout campfire songs started coming back to me. I'd sing to my granddaughter, who begged me to sing again: "I love you, a bushel and a peck, a bushel and a peck and a hug around the neck . . . "
Some friends at work heard about what I was doing, and they told me they wanted in on the action. We attempted to start a singing group: the "Sing Somethings". We declared the only requirement is that you had to have more enthusiasm than talent (I love that requirement). But somehow, nobody but me could ever make the get-togethers, and after a few valiant attempts on my part (at their urgings, mind you), I bailed and stopped trying. That was too bad.
I also learned of a couple of groups that I will probably want to join when I have a bit more time. My daughter and son sing in a local anyone can join choir (or is it chorus? I can never remember the difference). And there's a Sacred Harp group that meets once a month near me, that I might check out some day. (Thanks, EH, for pointing that out to me).
So, at any rate, basically I sang more and more from January through the summer, and got through the awkward phases into more fun phases, but not quite into the group scene. Everything was progressing nicely . . . and then September came.
I had started singing daily in 2018 because I'd noticed my voice was getting raspy. In fact, I'd had a persistent sore throat through the fall of 2017, and really wanted to enjoy my voice now that my throat had cleared up. But in the fall of 2018, I finally figured out the cause of my sore throat and raspy voice: heartburn.
That -- the figuring out that I had heartburn -- sounds like it ought to have been easy. But it wasn't easy, and that's a whole other story, with all sorts of twists and turns and a lot more excitement than doggies in the windows. So I'll save that for later, and end Part I of the Sing Daily update here.
Here's how that resolution went: I sang. Pretty much daily.
I was really bad, partly because I hadn't practiced remembering words, so actually coming up with songs to sing was tricky. For a while, it was a lot of "happy birthday", and two or three songs that I made myself learn again. (These were, "Be Thou My Vision" and "If I only had a brain", which I kind of giggled at singing in juxtaposition).
Eventually, I started singing more often because songs started coming to me in various situations. I'd come home and start singing to the dog: "How much is that Doggie in the Window?", and "Where, oh where has my little dog gone?". My girl scout campfire songs started coming back to me. I'd sing to my granddaughter, who begged me to sing again: "I love you, a bushel and a peck, a bushel and a peck and a hug around the neck . . . "
Some friends at work heard about what I was doing, and they told me they wanted in on the action. We attempted to start a singing group: the "Sing Somethings". We declared the only requirement is that you had to have more enthusiasm than talent (I love that requirement). But somehow, nobody but me could ever make the get-togethers, and after a few valiant attempts on my part (at their urgings, mind you), I bailed and stopped trying. That was too bad.
I also learned of a couple of groups that I will probably want to join when I have a bit more time. My daughter and son sing in a local anyone can join choir (or is it chorus? I can never remember the difference). And there's a Sacred Harp group that meets once a month near me, that I might check out some day. (Thanks, EH, for pointing that out to me).
So, at any rate, basically I sang more and more from January through the summer, and got through the awkward phases into more fun phases, but not quite into the group scene. Everything was progressing nicely . . . and then September came.
I had started singing daily in 2018 because I'd noticed my voice was getting raspy. In fact, I'd had a persistent sore throat through the fall of 2017, and really wanted to enjoy my voice now that my throat had cleared up. But in the fall of 2018, I finally figured out the cause of my sore throat and raspy voice: heartburn.
That -- the figuring out that I had heartburn -- sounds like it ought to have been easy. But it wasn't easy, and that's a whole other story, with all sorts of twists and turns and a lot more excitement than doggies in the windows. So I'll save that for later, and end Part I of the Sing Daily update here.
No comments:
Post a Comment