5:15 AM Alarm

5:30 AM Get out of bed, shower

6:30 AM Eat breakfast, writing in my journal, make M’s lunch

7 AM Help M get ready for school

7:30 AM Take M to school

8-9:45 AM Warmup (Bernold articulation book), record the list (9 excerpts), listen, adjust. The heat in the church hasn’t been working this week, so I am freezing. But I take the opportunity to see how that affects my playing, just in case I get a cold room.

10-11AM Go home, take a nap. My audition is scheduled for the afternoon, which is always a super sleepy time of day for me. If I have to audition in the afternoon/evening, I take a nap to offset some of that afternoon drop in energy.

11:15 AM Pick up C from preschool

12 noon Make/eat lunch

12:45 PM Clothes and makeup for audition

I:15 PM Warm up in the studio, checking Firebird and Voliere. Suddenly struggling with low notes and articulation. This exact thing is something that has happened before at other auditions. Today, I was able to identify tightness in the throat/back of the tongue. This is one of the things I had already adjusted in my preparation for the audition, so I just put some of my attention to that spot in my throat/tongue and fixed the issue… phew!

C was also playing M’s little flute while I was warming up, and threw a tantrum while I was trying to leave. I planned to leave about 1:30, but then he wanted me to read him a book, then another, and another. Then I had to go while he was screaming and crying and being restrained from chasing after the car. Quite the send off for an audition!

1:50 PM On my way, hitting traffic. GPS is giving me 3:15 as ETA- my audition is 3:50PM. I had planned for one hour travel and arriving one hour early, but it didn’t work out that way…

On the drive, I focused my attention on that spot on the back of my tongue/throat, and repeating positive statements to myself. I had practiced this (mental training) leading up to the audition as well, mostly “you can do it,” and good things my teachers have said to me like “you’re a damn good flute player” 😅

3:15 PM Arrived to park in an neighborhood near SMU. Fortunately, I have taken a few lessons here and at least knew where I was going. I had not planned on cutting it this close!

3:20 PM Arrived at music building, found the bathroom and practice room.

3:25 PM Gathering myself, again going over FB and Voliere (the two hardest excerpts for me on the list), and the opening of Mozart (usually the first thing I end up playing)

3:45 PM Head upstairs to wait outside the audition room. As I was waiting, I realized I could say to myself “I can win this.” Not that I definitely would, but at least I had the potential to win, and if not this audition, then some time in the future.

Up until now, I never truly believed that I could win. And I was right, because I hadn’t faced the challenges of Firebird and Voliere head-on until this audition. Unfortunately, these things are often self-fulfilling prophecies, and since I didn’t believe it, I performed that way too.

Realizing that I actually could win was a bit of a revelation.

Let me just clarify that I never really believed I could win a specific audition. Of course, I have a very strong belief that I can eventually win something, or I would have never come this far. But I never had the concrete feeling that I could win this audition, while I was there.

3:50 PM Prompt audition. I played Mozart, Brahms 4, Scherzo, and Firebird (!)

4 PM Done!!

4:15 PM Driving home (in traffic), listening to my audition recording on repeat. Many things were actually better than I thought. I had been disappointed by a few technical flaws, but I think the overall impression was pretty strong.

5:30 PM Home, dinner with kids

7-7:30 PM Teaching a piano lesson

7:30-8:15 PM Getting ready for bed

8:15-8:30 PM Reading to kids (C fell asleep while I was reading 😴)

9 PM Now!