What were your dreams as a child? Have you abandoned them?

[CandiCame]

My earliest dream, like preschool age, was to be an opera singer. I don't think that one ever went away entirely, and when I hear certain songs I wish I could create that sound.
But autism. I was nonverbal until school age, selectively mute for much of my childhood. I mimed if singing was involved. My vocal chords atrophied. To the point where I could only read to my kids for maybe 15 minutes max.
I've worked on building up my voice a lot, but there's was never a hope in hell that I'd really sing. Despite a pretty incredible lung capacity. Seriously. Huge.

Dreams suck. They just cause melancholy.

That was my mom's dreams for me, and you dodged a bullet. A big part of the reason I started singing was so I could destroy my vocal chords and get out of that whole mess. They literally control your food and everything. Your vocal coach will get mad at you for eating chicken nuggets (MEAT CAUSES MUCUS. NO YOU CAN'T HAVE MILK, HAVE YOU LOST YOUR GODDAMN MIND!?)

I liked dance but singing is BUCKWILD. And then your voice changes and everybody gets madder than hell because there's like a year period where you can't not fuck everything up, around 6th grade. Like it is physically impossible not to fuck everything up.

If that makes you feel any better. It's not fun. And the competitions are awful, except for the ones with schools. The school competitions, like choir and stuff, even if you're doing solos, are pretty fun. But everything else is awful.

Idk, I just thought that might make you feel better. It's one of those things that you think is gonna be fun but then you get into it and realize it's just a bunch of controlling bullshit.

I swear to god like, you know how I'm in therapy? The word "project" is literally a trigger for me. And for a lot of people. That's one of those things that you get to associating with terrible things and sometimes people will just say like, "We're gonna project a movie" or something and you can feel your body tense up.

"PROJECT! THEY CAN'T HEAR YOU IN THE BACK! YOU SHOULDN'T NEED A MICROPHONE! I'M GOING TO THE BACK ROW! PROJECT!"

And now I don't have an inside voice because I don't know how to talk from my chest. I literally don't know how to do that.

Mamma made me mash my M&Ms because chocolate causes phlem and we're not supposed to have those a week before a competition so what the hell else was I gonna do to them? Eat them? Can't do that shit.

Here's a lifehack from my mom: If you want your kids to be competitive singers, have more than one of them. Any vocal coach in the world will tell you that nobody can harmonize like siblings. That's why there's so many famous sibling singers. And the odds are one of them will stick with it. My brother has a gorgeous voice. Me, notsomuch. I sound like Dr Girlfriend from Venture Bros.

Despite that- here's something else that will suck about it. People will randomly come up to you at churches and funerals and shit, literal years after you quit singing, and force you to sing shit. They will physically shove you onto a stage and then you're just standing there in front of a crowd and it's like, "Alright, I guess I'm the fuckin dancing monkey. Literally nothing prepped at all. Amazing Grace it fuckin is, I guess, because it's about impossible to fuck that up."

One time at my granny's buckwild holy rolling church that happened to me and I went into Amazing Grace and at the end the band just lost their absolute shit and started doing this whole, "Jesus is good, Jesus is god," thing that is NOT in the song. Like it's straight up not part of the song. Later I found out that there's this famous bluegrass cover that did that, but I was just stuck up there with this completely different ending and had to freestyle it like a dumbass.

So that's... annoying. But they'll do it your whole life because you USED to be that guy, regardless of all the evidence that you are no longer that guy. And you'll hurt yourself.

Idk my point is, you might have not liked it anyway. And unless you're a soprano 1 most opera roles are gonna be supporting anyway if you're a chick. There's a huge bias in opera that's like... this whole big thing. And you don't control what your vocal range is, it's genetic. But altos get fucked in opera and everybody knows it.

I realized I never seriously answered this, but it's because I really didn't have any career aspirations when I was a kid. My thought process was usually just, "Well I know I don't want to keep living like this" and that was more or less it. I just wanted to have a whole bunch of money with no real plan about how to acquire that money.

If I had grown up in my kid's generation I am 100% positive I would want to be a youtube influencer though. Like not a doubt in my mind.

Edit: Started SMOKING, not singing. I started singing because my mom made me. Like... full stop. And my whole family was really on board with it for some reason. My gramps used to play guitar and force me to practice, too. Idk why the fuck everybody did that.

 

[dolf]

I was raised Vege, always hated milk, and my mother never gave us candy or pocket money to buy candy with, I wasn't allowed to leave the room to go to the toilet without explanation, a they don't really do competitions in the schools around here.

 

[CandiCame]

I was raised Vege, always hated milk, and my mother never gave us candy or pocket money to buy candy with, I wasn't allowed to leave the room to go to the toilet without explanation, a they don't really do competitions in the schools around here.

Well... schadenfreude all I got. So... I tried?

Wait, I got something else: It's never too late. That's a thing. People start careers late in life all the time.

 

[Tryharder62]

Funny about music. I wanted to sing on broadway and live in New York City.
These days I sing in the shower and live in a town of 2000 people.

My goal now is to learn how to insert buckwild into everyday conversation!

 

[Ziggins]

I wanted to be the guy who rides on the back of the garbage truck. I did not consider the risk of injury, chemicals, biohazards, etc. It just looked like a fun job.

 

[SissySalina]

Wanted to be the one to develop a serum that would increase the bust of a woman 10 times its normal size overnight, yes did finally give up the dream.

 

[BrokenBarbie]

Wanted to be the one to develop a serum that would increase the bust of a woman 10 times its normal size overnight, yes did finally give up the dream.

If you could just manage one that did 2x I'd be a loyal customer.

 

[RobDownSouth]

That was my mom's dreams for me, and you dodged a bullet. A big part of the reason I started singing was so I could destroy my vocal chords and get out of that whole mess. They literally control your food and everything. Your vocal coach will get mad at you for eating chicken nuggets (MEAT CAUSES MUCUS. NO YOU CAN'T HAVE MILK, HAVE YOU LOST YOUR GODDAMN MIND!?)

I saw a video on YouTube once of a Ginger Spice of the Spice Girls having a mini-meltdown because someone asked her to return to a recording studio to overdub a vocal..."I JUST DRANK SOME MILK...I CAN'T DO THAT NOW!" I guess milk is bad for your vocal cords?

Funny about music. I wanted to sing on broadway and live in New York City.
These days I sing in the shower and live in a town of 2000 people.

My goal now is to learn how to insert buckwild into everyday conversation!

Now THIS is a goal I could support. Personally, I've been working on inserting "plethora" and "penultimate" into random conversations.

 

[LLCox]

I wanted to be an astronaught but knew I wasn't smart enough.

I wanted to be a Forest Ranger but I ran into some good bud first.

Then I read a book called Five Acres and Independence... I have made that happen and now am living the dream.

Your results may vary.