Wow I'm slow.

So I just realized how everything really isn't fine and dandy in my life. I don't know why it took me so long, but I was never one to confront my own problems head on. I'll always force everything behind my laid back mask, the one that's just chill with life. And perhaps that's why when it piles up, the problem just seems so huge. It's like putting off all your homework assignments off until the day of the final. No matter how you try to deal with them, you gotta face your problems eventually.

It started when I was catching up with an old friend of mine. I've known him for several years now, despite growing up in completely different areas. We met at a joint church retreat and have had a common love for pho, and the rest as they say, is history. Tonight I met up with him again for some more pho, and we were just talking about what we've been up to for the past year and how we were doing. He was explaining how he met his girlfriend, and that turned into his plans for the future. And that's when it got me thinking, what are my plans for the future?

What am I going to do once I'm finished with school? I keep telling myself and other people that I plan to get a master's degree in music once I'm done with my undergrad, but what next? Teach music? A job in a symphony (which are extremely difficult to get)? My supposed dream job of forming a successful quartet in the bay area? There's no security in that. There's no stability in that. How do you raise a family with no security in such a volatile profession?

My dad and I had been having an on and off argument about me picking up a second profession such as computer engineering or pre-med in case music didn't work out, and I would just blow him off stating that I was too far into my undergraduate career to start that now, and to divide my time between two professions like that would just end up screwing me in both fields. But really, I was just too proud to go back on my word of making music a viable career. Too proud to tell my friends and colleagues that music wasn't for me. Too proud to become one of those sellouts that I scorn for using music to get into UCLA because their grades couldn't get them in the first time. What a waste of time; precious time that I could've used to work towards a profession that would actually be able to provide.

But in the end, I realize that it's not about what my plans for the future are. It's about what are God's plans for my future. I need to place my trust into God's hands. Trust that He'll have plans for a future that's fulfilling. Trust that He'll provide for me, and if there will be one, that He'll be able to provide for my family. Trust that He is sovereign over all things, including this dry and wretched world that I am called to love despite my inherent distrust of it.