May the Force be with you

One of the great pleasures of being a conductor who specializes in feature-film-with-live-orchestra concerts is that I get to do movies that I absolutely adore.  I’ve been on the Harry Potter junket for a couple of years now and that’s been a huge amount of fun.

(Those are Gryffindor and Slytherin scarves, for those of you not versed in that particular universe!)

While I adore Batman and Fantasia and Ratatouille 

I have to confess one upcoming movie gig has the fangirl in me squealing with delight:

I mean, I saw it in the theater.  Six times.  My brother and I owned an LP of what was essentially the music and dialogue of the entire movie (the battle scenes were shortened and a few bits taken out) that we played endlessly, so I practically have the whole thing memorized.

I’m so excited to do my first set of Star Wars shows with my hometown orchestra, the San Francisco Symphony, in July.  But that excitement is tempered by disappointment and frustration that because of this gig I’ll be missing a huge celebration for my father-in-law’s 70th in London.

While I hold a position with the Minnesota Orchestra, the majority of my work comes from guest conducting, which means I spend most of my time as an independent contractor.  Although in a sense this does come with a modicum of freedom, I’ve found that because I rely on my guest conducting income and it’s usually a matter of a gig wanting me (and not the other way around), I take most of the work that comes in.

Guest conducting opportunities tend to come in piecemeal, and I’ve frequently found myself needing to adjust my personal schedule for a gig, sometimes very last-minute.  Those of you who are freelancers probably understand the frustration of putting other plans on hold (or having to cancel them) because of a work opportunity that is just too good to let go.

My friends and I often talk about work/life balance and how that becomes even more difficult when you’re beholden to offers that come in from a million different places and at all points of the year.  I usually try to judge on two criteria:  financial gain, which is easy to quantify; and impact on my career/future work, which is way more complicated.  There’s always the fear that if you turn something down, you’re also turning down the opportunities that the work might lead to in the future, not just the work itself (the most anxiety-inducing kind of FOMO).

But that means I miss a lot of holidays, birthdays, fabulous dinner parties, camping weekends, time with friends, time with family.  And as the years go on I feel those losses more acutely as I realize that just as much as I may be forgoing opportunities for future work by not taking a gig, I’m giving up fleeting moments in time by choosing work over life.  It’s FOMO of a different kind, less immediate but cumulative in the psyche.

I’m still trying to figure out how to balance the personal and professional, and while I haven’t discovered any reliable hard-and-fast rules, I’ve found that it helps when I remind myself that life isn’t about accumulated wealth or lists of accomplishments but rather a collection of experiences that form you.  If I can be mindful of which experiences will help me grow, whether that’s as a conductor or as a person, I can usually make decisions with a little more clarity.

And then, of course, if it’s one of those years where I just need to take every single gig possible, it’s a pretty easy decision.  Freelancing is not the easiest way to make a living, but, as per the old Chinese curse, it makes for interesting times, and I really wouldn’t have it any other way.