A Successful Life

"Happiness lies in the joy of achievement and the thrill of creative effort." Franklin Roosevelt.

As I consider what to do with my life, I think it would be beneficial to break down my end goal. What I want out of life dictates the road I should choose that would help me be successful and happy.

Self-sufficiency: This is not just to say that I want my own place with a steady paycheck. That's a given. More specifically I want to be independent and not a burden to anyone. I live a spoiled life now, but ideally I'd like to have a simple life with less clutter. A Spartan life in a tiny home would streamline work and help me remember what's necessary and what's a luxury. It's a pipe dream to get off the grid, but having a garden sounds really appealing to me. If I have a family, I want to be able to support them comfortably and be able to save and plan for the future.

Orchestra: I want to have a fulfilling job. As an artist, I don't think I'm cut out for a regular 9-5 type job. I absolutely love orchestral playing and no matter where I go I hope to get more experience in an orchestra. Right now I know I couldn't win an audition with a major orchestra. It's too soon to dream about places like San Francisco or Chicago. I'm not even sure I could handle the extra pressure of being in a top orchestra (I typically think of New York, Cleveland, Chicago, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Atlanta, National). But I love Colorado so much, maybe Denver isn't out of reach after grad school. The real question is whether I will need to teach (or want to, who knows?). There is no chance of finding pedagogy courses in English in Vienna, so that is one important distinction. And while it's important to me to retry integrating music history and theory back into my music life, at the end of the day the only thing that matters is how well I play. In an orchestra most of the artistic choices will be dictated by the conductor.

Family: I hope to God to meet someone wonderful. I want to be a dad, some day. Meeting someone in Vienna is highly unlikely and would be complicated unless they were also American. That's not a huge factor because it's not like I'm guaranteed to meet someone in Boulder or Arizona. The more immediate family concerns I have are how much I'll miss my parents and sister's family once I leave Tennessee. I could fly home from Colorado 7 times for every trip I could pay for from Europe. It's unlikely I would come home that often, but the point is the cost makes traveling easier.

Culture: I like to consider myself as a relatively cultured, intelligent individual. I would rather go to a museum than a bar 4 times out of 5, and I never want to go to a club again. I'm sure Colorado and Arizona are full of unique American culture. Denver and Phoenix are major US cities, and I know I could attend orchestra concerts and find museums with fantastic art. What I really think the US has going for it is beautiful national parks. I would hike and bike and probably give white water rafting a try in Boulder. The desert would be quite a change in locale, and I have always wanted to see the Grand Canyon, which is within driving distance of Phoenix. But for a classical musician there is no beating Vienna in terms of culture. Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Brahms, Bruckner, and Mahler all lived there. Just walking through the streets is a joy. Obviously there is world class music and art almost every day. We simply do not have places like Schönbrunn or the Belvedere or the Hofburg. And the beautiful Austrian countryside is not far away. If I could afford to see Salzburg, Graz, Melk, Heiligenblut, Zell am See, and Mariazell, I would. (Not to mention Prague, Berlin, and Munich. And I never saw Italy or Switzerland.)

If I don't go back to Vienna, there really is no point in continuing to learn German. I not only love Austro-German culture but I would love to be fluent in a foreign language. I want to be a world traveler. I want to experience the world and be an informed American and citizen of the world. I want to see and absorb as much beauty as I can in this short life of mine. But school abroad also gives me something different from traveling. I wouldn't be a tourist, I would make Austria my home. It would become a part of me. The language, the food, the art, the markets, the operas would all come together to form my 'Austrian period.' It would shape my life forever.

Those are the major things I want to become. I'd also like to be an artist and a poet. I want to have a collection of the world's best films. I'd like to memorize Keats and Shelley and read Milton's Paradise Lost. I want to actually read all of the philosophy books I have. I want to make a book or a poem or a piece of art or a piece of music my own. I want to create things worth sharing with my lifelong friends. I want to be a man worth loving, a passionate musician, a caring and fun father, a wise and open-minded citizen, and a generous and kind-hearted soul. I want a simple, prudent life with a rewarding job, intellectual stimulation through surrounding myself with art and literature, to be shared with people that I love.