©2022 Alicia Dara
I come from a family of professional Symphony musicians who loved classical music more than anything in the world. When they weren’t playing it onstage with the orchestra, they were listening to it on the radio, or shopping for records featuring great classical pieces. For most of my childhood I sang in a classical children’s choir, and performed numerous solos, duets and ensemble works, some of which were very complex and required hours and hours of practice.
Yet despite this onslaught of old-world music, I secretly cultivated my own personal obsession: pop songs. It was the 1980’s, and pop was everything! I loved all the songs by Prince, Madonna, Cyndi Lauper, The Bangles, Janet Jackson and especially David Bowie. His voice sounded like it came from a deep cave of glamor and magic, where you could shut out the world and be your truest, most fabulous self. When his Serious Moonlight Tour came to town, I begged my parents to take me to the show, but nope; they had no understanding of Bowie’s brilliance, and I cried myself to sleep.
The day after the concert I sulked on the drive to school, but I consoled myself by remembering that tickets for the show had been very hard to get, and if I had missed it, likely my classmates had as well. But as soon as I walked into class I spotted a crowd gathering around a girl I’ll call Sal. I had to push my way in, to see what they were gawking at: Sal was wearing a genuine black satin, gold-embroidered Serious Moonlight tour jacket!! Her father was a lighting engineer at the stadium where the show had taken place, and he’d managed to buy the jacket for Sal before they were sold out.
This drove me crazy. I took my seat and grabbed my textbooks, but I couldn’t concentrate at all. The teacher was droning on about an upcoming English test, but all I could do was stare longingly at the picture of Bowie dancing on the back of Sal’s gorgeous jacket. At lunch I followed Sal to the cafeteria, and sat at a nearby table so I could keep an eye on her, to see if she spilled her lunch on Bowie. I even thought about following her home after school to make sure she didn’t let any rain fall on him, but I had to go to choir practice.
All week Sal wore the jacket, and all week I stewed in my resentment and envy. Friday afternoon I was walking down the hall on my way to gym class, when I saw Sal pass by with her Bowie jacket. As I turned my head to follow it, I tripped on a stray pencil and fell flat on my face, bruising my cheek and cutting my lip. If that wasn’t bad enough, my English test came back with a great big “B-”, a much lower grade than I’d ever gotten before. Apparently I’d been so distracted by the Bowie jacket that I’d bombed the test!
That’s when I finally shook myself out of my dark daze. It was one thing to love David Bowie and enjoy his music as much as I could. It was another to focus all my energy on a piece of clothing owned by a girl who wasn’t my friend, and didn’t care a bit about me. Suddenly I figured out that I had to stop envying others, focus on my own path, and start building the life I wanted. I call this the Serious Moonlight Principle, and I think about it whenever I start to feel envious of someone’s success (dancing around the living room to “Modern Love” also helps!).
I bring this up because recently many of my clients have been expressing deep envy for jobs and positions held by their friends. Yet the current job market indicates that it’s actually a great time to jump into a new job that can advance your career. As I’ve been reminding my clients, focusing on what others have is, and stewing in envy, is not a good strategy for your own growth! I recognize that job interviews can be scary. Finding your Power Voice can go a long way toward helping you feel confident and able to handle anything that is thrown at you during an interview. My next “Power Voice for Career Women” 90-minute Zoom training is coming up on June 16th. Here’s the TICKET LINK. Looking forward to working with you!
*Name and some details changed for privacy