Again, India.Arie saves my butt. I sit here, and I listen, and I realize that although the world is going to end... I think... it just might be ok.

can I share my evening with you?

So I screwed up tonight.

How did I do it? Did I get cocky? Perhaps. Was I busy doing other things? Yes. Did I ignore my intuition and go forward with a project that I felt uneasy about? Most definitely.

In short - and the last thing I want to do is recount the story, but I feel I must - I chose to sing a song for a "Staff On Stage" Performance at the summer camp I am working at till August. Well, I was asked to sing it. But I chose to do it. The song was "Defying Gravity", you know, that song that's all about breaking limits and being amazing and all those wonderful things I like to talk about... so when given the chance to sing it... this girl jumps. Right?

So here's the thing. I royally BOMBED. OK, so the majority of the audience loved it - you can't go wrong when you choose a crowd-pleaser song - but I didn't nail it. My voice cracked, I butchered important words like "down" and "ah" and that other word, you know, "gravity".

I didn't nail it.

I didn't nail it.

I disappointed myself and the people I perceive to matter.

FUUUUUUUCK!!!!

Over the past few years, I've been getting lazy with my voice. Yes, lazy is the word. Not practicing. Not singing. Taking time off.

Which has been fine. Because in the past, I've oversung. I've had a lot of fear tied up in my voice. I've had worries of abuse, seen specialists, been on voice rest, paid far too much attention to the technique of speaking, singing, breathing, moving... UGGGH! So I reached a point of... ENOUGH.

And I've been wanting to take a lesson with someone in vocal technique for at least a year. And this morning, I had the BEST lesson... 1.5 hours ... it was so great, I made all these wonderful advances, I remembered so much about pure vowels, and support, and heard everything with fresh ears and made new advances and felt so GOOD! And promised myself that for the song I was singing tonight, I would really practice it, and it would be AMAZING for tonight.

So can you guess what happened? Did I practice? Not a bit. Did I go forward with the song, all the while knowing that I still had issues? Absolutely.

THERE IS SO MUCH I DID WRONG TONIGHT!

I finished the performance, I left straightaway, blew off my other friends performing tonight, and felt this real strong primal urge for India and a blog. You know, my version of Scotch and a cig.

So what can we take away from this experience?Ummm, wait. What can I take from this?

"Sometimes you fly, and sometimes you fall. There ain't no way to avoid the pain, cuz getting burned that's how you learn to come back to the middle"

I think... I think... I think...

I think I'll be ok. I think this is Goduniverse's kick in the ass telling me to smarten up my technique. To have such an amazing morning with vocal discoveries and an extremely painful evening with Self-disappointments is an extreme ego-bruiser, and I think ... I think... I need to be very gentle with myself here.

It's Ok... because, to quote Queen Arie ... "to get to the top you must come back to the middle". So here lie I, before you... humbled, open, action ready, having hit Cocky, moved into Humbled... and now... am back at the middle.