midsentence

I am waking well before my alarm lately. Perhaps due to the turbo speed my dial of life is perpetually set to. Wake up. Shower. Sigh.

No pity here. Just truth, of things that have passed that I cannot change--be it to correct, alter, or eliminate. There is a drop of cherry juice on my white dress. My hair is unwashed. I missed the audition.

No pity. Truth. Reality. I feel anxious and then eased, not ever comfortable--just the measure of more or less tense. I babble all day long about this dream of mine and how I'm working toward it, and fill scripts with words I could have said to make the work move along.

I have fought and am still fighting. I have accepted that my life will never be one of rest. Seeds are planted in me that I have chosen to nurture. I have chosen this path for myself.

I cannot turn around. There is not a fork in my sight, not an option any longer for retreat to ease or quick fix, or even any other path of equal difficulty. My emotions fizz and bubble and surge me forward, hurling me at turbo speed down this path I have wanted, well before my alarm rings.

My fitful sleeping dreams are filled with men writing me off and labeling me arrogant in their minds, women with turquoise spectacles and bright red hair being polite and contradictory. I do not know how they feel about me really. Are they testing me? The harshness and the stark, seeming distaste just makes me cry.
Am I all alone in my dream, I wonder. My alive, awake dream. Why doesn't anyone believe in this stuff; it is just as real as going flat and forgetting words and miscommunication and lower-than-expected GPAs.

I tried hard not to regret. I made a list of blessings and smelled the air and looked at the majestic panoramic of the sky. I am so blessed, I remind myself through red eyes--just red from confusion, that's all.

There have been times of discouragement, but never of uncertainty, I wrote. Still true. There have been times of being unfair and snippy and of oversight, but never of failure, I should rephrase.
I didn't even think I would get this chance now. I didn't even think I'd be in the practice rooms of the HFAC imitating opera on my lunch breaks. I do not doubt the possibility that it is still going to happen now for me.
In the blank after GUT FEELING, I think she put a Y. I think he put a question mark. Perhaps that is too generous, perhaps me and my non-mold-fitting ways are too cocky to realize truth.

I have had frustration, not fear. I have had uncertainty in circumstance, but surety of outcome. I know what I have learned. And it is not to never trust anyone, or to fight people when it's your word against theirs. It is that I might never wake up to my alarm again. That I feel too much to be still in fitful dreams of



......

I left this post in midsentence, anxious to get home to bffls and boyfriends and pink plastic tablecloths for utensil-less spaghetti. I left my overspoken dream hovering in midsentence, cursor blinking, mascara smudged off. Days have passed--whatever pressing insight might have finished that sentence is lost in translation of all the discoveries and events and more FEELINGS...but not a minute goes by that I don't think about my stupid powerLESS heels, aural skills, smiling compliments of the best essays ever read punctured by after-questioning do-I-have-a-practical-side.

Okay, I just backspaced the start of a torrent of smart aleck comments. Backspace again. Blinking cursor again.
Starting and stopping, again--stopping, for now.

Power heels, comma, BOP

My power shoes are a little squeaky and I wonder absently if "Dr. B" will notice that I wore them the last time we met. He won't.

I've had nothing but happiness and strength today--the butterflies that choked my words and stifled my courage last night have laid down to let me fly in their place today.
I'll accept that they'll come back on the walk up four flights of stairs, power shoes clicking away. I'll pause outside the office, take a deep breath, smooth my skirt. My mind will be clear but not blank, still buzzing. I'll remember mom's voicemail and Garrett's text and Claire's reassuring shouts this morning. (Who knew shouts could be reassuring? We yell everything lately. It makes all things we say BETTER. SEE?!)

After the rating scales of teaching personality and musicality/background, there is a space for "GUT FEELING."

"YES! YES! YESSSS!!" I SHOUTED into the empty office this morning.

Gut feeling.

......

In other news, Jared Schultz.

He is continuously, incessantly, literally always bopping around in my brain matter.
((a note to the Scattergories Authority: "bop" absolutely IS a legitimate way to travel--please see above example.))

And I can't stop the boppage, although I do not know why I would want to, considering the silly grin said boppage plasters on my face as I float around all day. I don't let you in on this ridiculousness usually, because usually, when people talk about this stuff, I find it ultra lame and boring and ultra all-the-same.
But JARED SCHULTZ, ahhhhh!! I am a very huge fan of exceptions when this creature is involved. I am the person I never planned on being, and somehow I am perfectly okay with it. Except for the times when I shout at him that he's ruining all my plans and why does he have to be so wonderful. He shrugs and says sorry, which makes me fall into a fit of giggles and I am okay with being Giggly Girl oogling at Boyfriend once again.

"hey girlfriend. you're like the soy sauce to my sushi." YEAH I am.

iiiiiiiii liiiiiiiiiike hiiiiiiiim.

note: i still do not understand/adore the other members of the male class. you are still on probation with me for a little while longer. purely informational.

tumbleweed

I despise the word ‘network’ as a

verb.

Since when did people become

something to procedure as computers.

With computers.

…

I love this font.

…

I despise flakes and flecks and specks of things getting on my white shorts.

…

I love/despise BYU magazine:; love for all the

inspiring things people do, despise for the ridiculous

things people can accomplish and why the heck

haven’t I done such things, I am older than the girl

from Finland who moved out at 14 to live on her

own to be closer to her violin teacher so she could win bajillions of awards and prizes. ALSO, what

is this about some girl getting ORCA grants for her

research about steak browning?? Despise on this one.

…

I love running in the morning in summer alongside a

couple of the best creatures ever created.

……

I despise things that smell bad: today, the office

of computer dudes next door.

…

My life is uncomplicated, really.

An explanation of jubilee

this is kendra. she is practically perfect.


"You look happy," Bishop said to me yesterday, after we talked about the temple and he signed a new recommend for me. I love this man.

"I am." My response was automatic, but real.

"It's a good feeling." We smile kind of knowingly at each other, and all I can do is nod.

The best feeling, my constant glee.
So I need you to know that it is possible. It isn't too much to handle. I still feel everything else. Just in this frame of incessant joy that does not go away, because it is in direct proportion to how close I let myself get to the author of all happiness.
He is as real as these feelings. Nothing will make me stop knowing that; I will not apologize for that.
I will not try to paint a picture of my life as perfection--I think you already know about the non-perfection too much to gloss it over enough, anyway.
This joy of mine is not based on ignorance, but instead on new understanding.

Happiness does not arrive, but evolves and changes with us; it is not dependent on our circumstance, but on the state of our insides.

And we read these ideas and skim these how-to books and don't believe any of it, because that's not real life; it's a scam. Those fairytale feel-good movies just suck our money and our time, because we know how it really is. We live our lives in it. In the muck and the grime and the grit and the logistics of the world that is a couple parts good but overwhelmingly more parts awful. To be dealt with and hid from and endured.

No. We choose. We chose to be here. We choose how we become while we're here. We choose where we're going.

"They themselves are makers of themselves, by virtue of the thoughts they choose and encourage; that mind is the master-weaver, both of the inner garment of character and the outer garment of circumstance, and that, as they may have hitherto woven in ignorance and pain they may now weave in enlightenment and happiness."

-James Allen, As A Man Thinketh ((MACY! I am ADORING this book!!))

No, no no: read that quote again.
Think about it again.

This is what makes reality. I choose to be close to the God I love, who loves me when I am undeserving; I choose to be close to the God who "knows all the thoughts and intents of the heart; for by his hand [was I] created from the beginning." (Alma 18: 32)
In turn, I choose to be happy.

Because I know Him, I know my life isn't some pointless array of random acts that have no lasting effect, that I will be together forever with those I love and that my life will mean something, even after it is over.
Knowing this, I can wake up smiling.

This is who I am. This is who I am discovering I can be. And this is how my life course will run.
I will not apologize for that.

the reason why i have been a nutcase for a while now

Portfolio: check.
sigh.
this thing has been sucking all my time and vitality, in a mostly good but really suction-sucking way, for a while now. I can't believe it's done.
I pause to look at it sitting next to me, with sewn pockets for dvds and four rings binding the top--what IS this thing. my whole life, basically. trying to convince paul broomhead that my life course should be allowed to run the way i want.

but i already know he is going to leap for joy when he sees this thing of beauty and wonder. he is going to not just pat me on the back, but, perhaps, take me in a full bear hug because he is so refreshed by my creativity and charm and he will say, "gosh, brooke, i don't even think you NEED to go through the program. here is a diploma, and you can go teach at ron clark and bell and ride off into the sunset of blissful happiness. go ahead, congratulations."

the weight of trying to make my biggest dreams in the world happen in a few short weeks has been...crushing. crushing like pressed flowers, when you get something concentrated and new and beautiful...


SO ANYWAY. I'm done. And you can read my first essay today, if you want. They told me analyze your motivation to teach, tell us when you decided to teach, and hey, how committed are you to this career. Pmff. I wanted to refer them to this blog like seventeen times. I will probably post the second one as well, but for now, here is the first. quite fitting that my 100th post is about being a music teacher.



HERE IT IS!!

I love soul music. I can be found rolling out of bed to Aretha Franklin wailing “Respect,” blow drying my hair to her gospel croons of “Can I get a witness?”, and dancing all over campus to “What a Friend We Have In Jesus” with my hand as a microphone. I’ve always been adamant that music isn’t music without soul; without feeling. It is this element that has molded my own soul, and planted in me the desire to have a hand in sculpting others.

I want to shape souls, human ones; through my own passion, my feeling, my music. There is no more direct avenue to this end than teaching music in public school.

Public school music gave me a great experience. I felt the mysterious magic of music and knew I wanted it all my life, and choir was enjoyable and enlarging. But I never pictured myself ending up as a public school music teacher until I was at a choir concert after my first year of college, with a lot of experiences to fuel the musical fire but no major to claim. I had tentatively decided to major in music, but there were still doubts—especially about teaching—that ate my deep desire and digested it to disdain. The fear that paralyzed me: what did I have to offer students more than someone else?

But as I sat there at that choir concert after a year of constant struggle to figure out who I wanted to be and how my dreams fit in with reality, something happened. I sat there with my mouth unhinged, paralyzed, and the chills would not stop. It was then that I first said to myself, “this is what you’ve got to do. Nothing else is going to cut it—you have felt the joy and wonder of music all your life, but you’ve tasted this feeling now, this feeling that is somehow different. You are a teacher, and you are enough. You will bring things to the table that nobody else in the world can, and those are your passion, your deep spiritual connection to this medium, your vision and devotion--these feelings you have right now. And there is no turning back. Your heart has been given away to this—you’ve got to be a music teacher, and that’s that.”

It hit me then, that teaching music was all I had ever actually wanted to do and I had been fighting it because I was afraid. Afraid of the failure; of the success, too. I tried not to be a music geek—talking about music all the time and thinking about music all the time and being like, "Music is my life blah blah” all the time—but, I had to confess: I was a music geek. To the core. Music is such an incredibly basic part of my makeup, like water and oxygen; it is intertwined and woven and stitched in me so deeply that it can't be separated from the intangible qualities of Brooke Beecher and I've got to shout about it!!

So teaching gives me a podium from which to shout; not a podium for preaching or my own accolade, but one that gives a standing point from which to see change in people over time. As a ward choir director while still in high school, I got a first glimpse of the change I could facilitate. Under my direction, choir members learned music as something that made them better people, as an avenue for finding Christ. I saw their faces light up as they grasped the concepts, and I heard them sing differently with faces newly alight. I got to see faces light up again as a Relief Society teacher; we discussed the gospel, we “[understood] one another, and both [were] edified and rejoice[d] together” (D&C 50:22). I began to see the parallels between teaching the gospel and teaching music, experiencing the same edifying and rejoicing—these added drops to the bucket of my desire to teach music.

The tipping point came when I was given a rowdy six-year-old Primary class. Under my tutelage, I watched them go from flying limbs and all manner of screaming, wailing, and whining to arms folded and minds affixed. I sat back in awe, realizing that the expectations and love that had come naturally to me, coupled with hard work, had actually facilitated change. The outcome left me in awe because the process was almost imperceptible, changing from moment to moment—a process alive to me in a way no other endeavor ever has been. I began to realize the greatest joy I found was in setting high expectations for these children, and being the person who saw their potential and pushed them with love and patience. It was this experience that was the epiphany for the niche I have discovered as a music teacher in inner city schools. The lack of discipline and stimulation from the arts found in these schools touches a deep desire inside of me to love people in a way that helps them see the world in a new light; this light is the joy and capacity of music to lift the human spirit and take us to greater heights—not just as musicians—but as human beings.

And so you see, I’m not just a singer; I am a teacher. The seeds of both are planted in me, to work together and bring forth something uniquely me—to make some girl from a small town in Utah into a teacher in urban schools, who molds souls and minds. This process, however difficult, is the path most congruent with my life goals: to change people for the better and to guide others in their spiritual and emotional journeys to find themselves and Christ. Because I have found Christ so beautifully through music, it is the lens through which I can help others see Him with the most clarity. Music fills me. It fills me to overflowing, so that I have to share it; body and spirit, music is magic. I want to be an instrument of that magic in another’s life.

I want to shape souls, human ones—with my soul. This can be done most directly through the medium of music that has shaped my soul so poignantly. My vision of being a music teacher who does this is too clear to be clouded by doubt any longer; I am fiercely committed to making this vision reality.
“Can I get a witness?”

The Seed (Part 2)

remember my seed exam? my marriage that i have loved and nurtured so faithfully? the seed i wrapped in saran wrap and a kitchen towel to keep it warm, and put under the table lamp every single day to watch it sprout? these have been the results.







well, i should be honest and tell you it's dead now. but it was a good run, seed. i loved you a lot. i still love you, dead as you are. i will forever remember you this way, with leaves and pretty purple blossoms.
good thing this isn't a type of things to come in the marriage department, riiiiggght!

bonkers.nuts.psycho.crazy.insane.ridiculous. above and beyond and around and under all those things.

i know they have to accept me when i am doing things like this. they have no other choice.
but seriously.


i felt like this ^^^^^

this weekend was NUTS, i tell you. in wonderful ways and ways i'd rather not return to and ways i was completely not expecting and in ways i am totally unsure how to feel about and all very exhausting, but very magnificent.

and then i felt like this, five seconds later.