Maren’s Musings
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It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Burnout
I used to love the holiday season. When I was little, my mom and I would drive up and down the streets looking for the most festively-decorated houses, shouting, “Oooh!” every time we would see one that was particularly spectacular. We would decorate the tree with a variety of ornaments (as a violin teacher, she…
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Getting to the Top
I’m writing to you from an elevation of about 7,500 feet. Right now, I’m on tour in Montana with The Crossing, and every morning, I have gotten up and gone for a walk. A walk in Montana is actually a hike, especially where we are staying. There are lots of hiking trails around here and…
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How to Get to Carnegie Hall
Last week I had a conversation with a friend about my singing career. He compared me to some soloists that he has heard around town with big organizations like The Philadelphia Orchestra, and said that my singing was easily on par with them. Why didn’t I do gigs like this? he asked. I agreed that…
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Fool’s Gold
One time, in choir camp… When I was a kid, I used to spend two weeks every summer at a choir camp in the foothills of the Sierra-Nevada mountains. It was a pretty typical summer camp, I suppose…filled with music theory, rehearsals, choreography, and campfire opera stories. Every kid grew up with this, right? 😉…
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The Power of No
I’ve always had a hard time saying no. Call it social conditioning, the patriarchy, people-pleasing, what-have-you… all I can say is that when someone asks me to do something, my knee-jerk reaction is to say yes. Whether or not I actually want to do it. At the beginning of my career, the ability to say…
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The Why of Marketing
Most of my clients hate marketing. They don’t want to come across as needy or pushy, and they think that marketing means you have to show up on social media like a carnival barker: “Get your tickets right here! Fresh, hot tickets! You sir, want to treat your lady to something special tonight? Come to…
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Imperfect Pitch
How do you know if someone has perfect pitch? They tell you. This joke shines a spotlight on the stereotypical image of the Hermione Grangers of the musical world: those with perfect pitch. They are seen as know-it-alls, people who delight in being right all the time. Because they can perfectly pull any specific pitch…
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Income Streams
Okay, now you’ve made your budget and figured out how much your project is going to cost. So, how are you going to pay for it? You have several options: • Contributed Income • Earned Income Contributed Income is any money that comes to you simply because you are asking for support. Examples of contributed…
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Budgeting for Expenses
When it comes to your projects, are you creating a budget? Or do you just have a general sense of how much certain things are going to cost and keep a tally in your head? (This question applies both to your life and any project you might have…but since I am a business coach for…
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Otis the Escalator
One of my earliest (and scariest) memories involved a crowd, a monster, and unrelenting forward progression. There we were, in the middle of a Macy’s on a busy afternoon, and my dad was teaching me how to ride the escalator. It wasn’t going well. At all. Until this moment, every time the two of us…