In March 2012 I saw Welsh bass-baritone Bryn Terfel sing in Mozart’s Don Giovanni at the Metropolitan Opera. I hadn’t seen much opera before, but Terfel was so funny, his Italian diction so perfect, and his ability to communicate music and art so direct, that it changed me. I became an opera fan. I auditioned for and was accepted to the 80-voice Ars Musica Chorale and a whole new universe of creative people. I started taking voice lessons, sang my first solo at a student recital, and joined the board of the Chorale.
I already knew French and Italian fairly well, but since starting that I’ve learned to sing in German, Latin, Hebrew, and even Church Slavonic. I memorized the Welsh national anthem in Welsh so I could sing it on the national holiday in Wales, where I met Terfel himself. Meanwhile, at work in the telecom construction industry, I became the go-to person for all sorts of software and database challenges in my office. In QuickBase, Excel and other programs, I created tables, dashboards, workflows, page views, formula fields, reports, links, and buttons, increasing overall productivity while I continued to manage project schedules.
I was laid off from my employer after nine years of excellent reviews. Since the hiring of a web developer put me out of a job, I thought, “let’s get on the other side of that equation, where the growth is.” I’ve always enjoyed working with a variety of people, from engineers and technicians to artists and writers. Now is the time for me to integrate my whole self into my job, combining my love for technology, communication, process improvement, languages, teamwork and art into a new career.