COVID-19 and a new career
- COVID19
For the last twenty years since I graduated from highschool in 2000, I’ve been either training as or working as a musician, specifically a classical singer. I did a few years at a small university in Langley, BC called Kwantlen and then finished a BMus at Western University in London, ON. From there I did a Master’s of Music degree at the University of Toronto’s Opera School.
Since graduating from Opera School in 2009, my life has been a mix of singing professionally as a soloist with various orchestras, choirs, opera companies, and teaching voice lessons.
Along the way I filled in some of the gaps with various other jobs. Retail (I’m not at all suited to retail), landscaping (kind of miss it on nice sunny spring days–so glad not to be doing that when it’s cold and slushy and gross), working as a background extra in film and TV (books, instant coffee and, for some inexplicable reason, funions).
I also ran a side-hustle for a while as a graphic and web designer. I picked up a lot of design skills and designed and built quite a few WordPress sites.
Enter COVID-19.
I’m quite proud of the life my wife and I have built as freelance singers and voice teachers. We have a thriving voice studio that has had a steady inflow of students, we started a recital series that’s been well recieved by the community and continues to grow, and we’ve been able to buy a little house with a garden in Hamilton where we’re raising our two crazy kids. For the most part, our lives are pretty stable and predictable.
But as with any freelance career it comes with a certain amount of uncertainty. Every once in a while for years now I’ve day dreamed about getting a “proper” job and the financial security and predictability that would come with it. But it’s never gone past idle fancy.
Until now. COVID-19 has uppped the ante considerably. Countless choirs, opera companies, and orchestras have been forced to shut down operations for the remainder of their 2019/20 seasons. Some have started cancelling their 2020/21 seasons as well. Churches have stopped holding in person services, which means no church choirs.
It’s a perfect storm of bad conditions: because of the nature of the virus and how it transmits, singers are super spreaders; there will be restrictions on large gatherings until this pandemic is good and over which by some reports could be as long as 2-3 years. The economy will be in some form of recession for the next while as well, meaning less money available for the arts organizations.
I’m not pessimistic about the long term health of the arts sector or the vocal arts, but realistically, in the short term, the prospects are bleak. We’re in for a bad drought and a long rebuild.
So if ever there was a time to turn an idle fancy into a real plan, it’s now.
The plan
Over the next year and a bit, I will embark on a program of self-study to build out a markable skill set as a front end web developer, with the goal of being job ready by September 2021.
What I already know
Thanks to my previous side-hustle as a graphic and web designer, I’ve already got a decent start.
I’ve got a good working knowledge of design principles and design software including:
- Photoshop
- Illustrator
- Indesign
I have a headstart on some foundational web development skills:
- HTML
- CSS
- Responsive design principles
- A smattering of PHP, mostly in the context of building custom WordPress themes.
- A teeny bit of javascript and jQuery
What I need/want to learn
My most pressing need is to build my knowledge and skill in actually programming.
I found this super-helpful roadmap (https://roadmap.sh/frontend) that corresponds really well with most of the advice I’ve read and got from talking with friends and family in the business.
I will be following basically that path, building as many little side projects as I can to put my newly acquired skills to work. I know from my many learning adventures that the best way to get new information to stick is to try and use it and use it in as many different ways as possible.