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Decluttering My Space and My Time

When I left Milwaukee 4 years ago, I got rid of a lot of stuff that I didn’t feel I needed to take with me. I had thought I’d gotten rid of a lot of stuff the year before, when we started our major remodeling project for what we thought was going to be our “forever” – or at least for ten years – home. But then when we decided to move out east, we realized that we still had a lot of stuff that we didn’t need.

And then we moved into what is now our “forever” – or as close to forever as anything really is – home, and discovered that we still had way too much stuff. And we keep accumulating things, despite our best efforts.

So I am taking advantage of this summer to try to keep what “sparks joy” (or at least not “provokes ennui”) and get rid of the rest. (This concept is from Marie Kondo’s book, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up.) Yesterday, I bought new workout clothes and I’m going to go through some of the 25+ year old t-shirts that I have prided myself on still being able to fit into – so what if you can see through them – and toss things out. No, they’re not going to become rags. We have rags. If you have a t-shirt that you say is going to be a rag, sooner or later, it’s going to wind up on your back when you’re in a hurry. OUT.

Also going through costume jewelry. Some things I may designate as potential props for studio recitals, future shows, etc., and they will go upstairs, in our prop/costume/workout space.

Of course, this means that I need to organize my upstairs prop/costume/workout space and see what it is I don’t need up there.

I suspect that this is going to be harder than I expected.

How does this affect me musically, since that’s supposed to be the point of this blog?

I’m also trying to re-do my studio vocalise sheets and toss out the vocalises that I have never used, which just filled space on the page when I first created them for a workshop 10+ years ago.

I have a project in mind for a poster paper to present at NATS in June 2018, and I figure the less clutter I have at hand, the less clutter I have in mind. (The due date for that is December 1, 2017, so I have a bit of time to organize this.)

If I have less stuff taking up space in my place, I will have less stuff taking up space in my mind. And hopefully, that will spark joy.

And I didn’t even have to buy the book to get this insight. Huh.

Published by Mezzoid Voice Studio

Christine Thomas-O'Meally, a mezzo soprano and voice teacher currently based in the Baltimore-DC area, has performed everything from the motets of J.S. Bach to the melodies of Irving Berlin to the minimalism of Philip Glass. As an opera singer and actress, she has appeared with companies such as Charm City Players, Spotlighters Theatre, Chicago Opera Theater, Opera Theater of Northern Virginia, Opera North, the Washington Savoyards, In Tandem Theatre, Windfall Theater, The Young Victorian Theater of Baltimore, and Skylight Opera Theatre. She created the role of The Woman in Red in Dominick Argento’s Dream of Valentino in its world premiere with the Washington Opera and Mary Pickersgill in O'er the Ramparts at its world premiere during the Bicentennial of Battle of Baltimore at the Community College of Baltimore County. Other roles include Mrs. Paroo in Music Man, Mother Abbess in Sound of Music, Dorabella in Cosi Fan Tutte, Marcellina in Le Nozze di Figaro, both Hansel and the Witch in Hansel & Gretel, and many roles in Gilbert & Sullivan operettas. Her performance as the Housekeeper in Man of La Mancha was honored with a WATCH award nomination. Ms. Thomas-O'Meally received an M.M. in vocal performance from the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore. She regularly attends master classes and workshops in both performance and vocal pedagogy, and is certified in all three Levels of Somatic Voicework™ The LoVetri Method. Her students have performed on national and international tours of Broadway productions, at prestigious conservatories, and in regional theater throughout the country.

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