2023 Life & Travels Review

Last year in 2022 I embarked on a glorious bender of far-flung international travel. By the end of it my bank account had dwindled, and my music career needed serious medical attention. 2023 was ultimately the hangover and subsequent recovery. For much of the year I battled indecision, bouncing from one idea to the next about what I wanted. Then, come the final third of year, I suddenly found myself in an unexpected and satisfying place within my career and travels.

On New Year’s Eve I landed in the New Zealand capital of Wellington to begin a second working holiday visa. New Zealand had long been a favorite country of mine, I was keen to try and freelance with my viola and to build back some funds with additional work.

On New Year’s Day I met a guy from Tinder. Also a musician, he had an appealingly settled life with a simple yet nice apartment … and a partner. I quickly became transfixed with what his life looked like. It was completely the opposite of mine, the kind of life I had grown to envy having done little but travel in my late 20’s. Meeting him sent me into a heavy fog of doubt over my visa, and it matched the dreary weather we experienced in the days afterwards.

A week into the trip I decided that I had made the wrong decision to come to New Zealand. As much as I loved New Zealand, the almost-thirty-something in me wanted to begin the process of settling down. That wasn’t going to happen here, working backpacker jobs and bumbling around for gigs. After just two weeks I had flown back to America to stay with my parents, where I would base myself while I continued to take professional orchestra auditions.

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Back home I immediately got to work practicing, and I had a list of orchestra auditions I wanted to take. After seven years I got back on a prescription for beta blockers – a commonly used medication that is helpful for performers to calm their nerves in high stress situations.

Naturally, my first audition was abroad – for the Finnish Radio Symphony in Helsinki. It was an adventurous first choice of audition … to say the least. I felt prepared for it – and I performed easily the best I ever had in an audition. I also had fun, which was a plus. I didn’t end up passing through the first round, but later I received positive feedback from the audition panel. Helsinki was otherwise uneventful, there was a mist and a steady drizzle that cast a mysterious vibe.

As strongly as I felt about auditioning again, it wasn’t without its fair share of issues. A week after Finland I had a rather terrible audition in NYC for a summer job – a flight delay had left me with poor sleep beforehand. Still, this audition sent me into a frenzy. For a week afterwards I seriously pondered moving to either Seattle or Portland to build a freelance life, and to give up on auditioning … for the millionth time.

Once the idea of moving to the Pacific North West had come and gone, I began preparing to audition for the Columbus Symphony in Ohio. My luck be damned, this one was also rocked by a flight delay. I got in really late the night before and decided against a hotel, so I slept in the airport. It was no surprise that my audition the next afternoon was almost as bad as the last.

At this point I had been home for three months, and had taken three auditions – all of which led me nowhere. My self-doubt overflowed, and my life felt stagnant as if we were once again in early pandemic times. In late April I decided (against all better judgement) to pack up and return to New Zealand to re-commence my working holiday visa. This time I chose to base myself in the largest city of Auckland as I got logistics sorted.

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It helped that I had friends in the “City of Sails”. Josephine and Faith had been my quick companions last year on our Komodo Island Sailing tour in Indonesia, and they were then part way through their own working holiday visas. They were gracious to host me as I finally opened a Kiwi bank account, and searched for a job. This time I kept my options open – I’ll work anywhere, I told myself. I had reached a point of desperation that was both scary and enlivening.

Two weeks in I was all ready to move to the Bay of Plenty to begin a not-so-glamorous job pruning on a kiwi orchard. Then, suddenly I woke to an email from a colleague back home – I had gotten off the waitlist for a job at a renowned classical music festival I had applied to. It meant a month of guaranteed work, opposed to grueling hours and potential rain cancellations working in New Zealand. It would also mean spending my 30th birthday in the city of Charleston, South Carolina. I decided to accept the offer within five minutes, and I immediately booked flights to return to America the next morning. (Thankfully the position included a travel stipend).

With my flights booked I backed out of the pruning job, and enjoyed one last day in Auckland with my friends – we took the ferry out to the picturesque Rangitoto Volcano for a hike. The very next night I was back home in Wisconsin. I didn’t even have time for jet-lag, as I had to quickly repack to head to Charleston the next morning. It was one of the quickest turn arounds I had ever experienced in my travels/career. It was very … well, me.

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Arriving in Charleston for the Spoleto Festival USA it was immediately clear that I had made a good decision, one that would serve as the catalyst to more down the line. That month there were opera and full orchestra performances, and enjoyable meals with friends both new and old – all set in one of America’s most charming cities. It was also a great place to turn 30 – our work load was low, and we were essentially in full-on holiday mode.

After the festival a good friend of mine invited me to stay with her in Seattle and then Salt Lake City – where she was touring with the broadway production of Les Miserables. I had never been to either, and figured it would be a nice way to spend a couple of weeks before plotting my next move. I liked Seattle on the one sunny day we had, but otherwise the infamous rain was not for me. Salt Lake City, however, was pleasantly bright. The region was a paradise – sunny, dry, mountainous, arid … but also forested.

From there I hunkered down back home in Wisconsin with my parents. At this point a couple things were evident to me – I wasn’t going to return to New Zealand, but I still had a strong desire to solo travel. I thought that perhaps if I completed the trip I most wanted to do, then I would be able to focus all my energy back on auditions. Thoughts of India and Nepal had danced in my mind for some time, and so in July I decided to suck it up and work for a few months in my hometown to save up money for the trip.

At first I was hired to work as a deli associate at a local grocery store. I had never worked in my small hometown, and the idea of it felt backwards at age 30. Interestingly the deli job initiation was delayed due to a computer issue, and in that week my mind wandered enough that I decided to pull out of the job. From there I applied to a variety of other random things including an English teaching position in Korea, a flight attendant position with Delta, and a remote grading position with a university. If anything was certain of my year thus far, it was that I was looking to any avenue possible for answers and clarity.

Fear of making wrong decisions had rocked my year, but in August something changed. I revisited the idea of taking auditions. This time, however, instead of focusing on full-time orchestras I sought out per-service orchestras. These, in contrast, could give me greater freedom, as they run part-time. In such a position I could earn enough while still living on/off with my parents to do the budget traveling I desired between jobs. Come the end of August I auditioned for the Hartford Symphony in Connecticut, and was surprised when I was offered a one-year position with them.

As if this wasn’t enough to be excited about – my friend in the touring industry helped me to secure my own tour job with a new ensemble called Emo Orchestra. This wouldn’t overlap with Hartford, and so come the first week of September I had a nice work calendar for the remainder of the year and into the next. As the cherry on top, I would have just enough time between gigs to pursue a couple of year end backpacking trips.

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My seven-week tour with the Emo Orchestra and the band Hawthorne Heights took me all over the United States by bus – from Ohio, to Florida, to Long Island, and all the way over to California. It was a completely new experience performing emo/punk music, but it was fresh and enjoyable. All of my years living out of hostels had readied me to live on a cramped tour bus – it wasn’t nearly as exciting as living on a cruise ship, but boy was it a fun and unique way to travel (picture it: bus lounge Netflix binges of The Golden Bachelor and Naked Attraction).

By mid-November the metaphorical “hangover” I mentioned at the top of this post had passed, and I was immensely better off than I could have imagined at the start of year in New Zealand. It’s not like I had the tenure-track full time orchestra job, or an apartment to settle into – but I did have enjoyable work and time between to enjoy my standby flight benefits. In a way it felt like a better result than I could have hoped for. My life and interests finally felt balanced.

As for my desire to go to India, I realized that I simply couldn’t travel that far between my gigs. Instead, I set my sights on Central America – which is relatively close. I decided I would visit the five remaining countries there that I hadn’t yet been to across multiple trips into 2024.

Just a few days after my tour ended I embarked on the first of said trips: a week long stay in Honduras – where I based myself in the town of Copán Ruinas for four days.

A week after returning from that trip I was on my way over to Hartford, for my first concert cycle with the orchestra there. It was delightful to have a contrasting experience performing classical music following seven weeks of high energy shows on tour. Emerging from all the craziness this year I felt so lucky to be working, and doing what I loved.

In Early December I headed back to Central America to begin a five week trip between El Salvador, Guatemala, and Belize. I was ecstatic to be able to spend such quality time in this beautiful part of the world – visiting colonial-era towns, lounging around stunning lakes, and hiking volcanoes. With everything considered, I couldn’t be happier with where 2023 took me. I will fondly remember the difficult but ultimately fruitful journey it was.

Up Next: “One Week in El Salvador“