you know full well i really love your singing and that it's a talent we have in common. i actually got told a lot in high school by my sisters to stop singing around the house and stuff because it was annoying and i wasn't as good as i thought. in their defense, i totally wasn't as good as i thought back then. but i still kept doing it and now, while my voice isn't exceptional, i know that i sound pretty good :) so moral of the story is frick the haters
deletedover 6 years
Oh wow, Tuck, I didn't know you sing. You should post a vocaroo of a cover of a song or something (if you are comfortable with that ofc).
I feel the same way you do about singing but with writing. I believe that I was born to write; it's a great way for me to relieve stress and past the time tbh. I was once tokd my writing sucks and that I should quit also (by a 4th grade teacher, mind you), however, I didn't let that get me down and continued to write.
I hope you keep up singing tho! It's quite a talent to have :)
Since then, the styling of my voice has changed a lot, probably due to the music I listen to, but it's not something I share with a lot of people, probably because I haven't accepted that I'm any good. It's pretty tough because music is subjective, and of course along with everyone else, whether someone likes your voice or not is going to be subjective as well. Just because you hit the notes, that doesn't mean that people will like you or even think you're talented. It took a long time for me to realize that, and I wish I realized it sooner.
I never know how to end these things because it's like my mind just wanders forever with no clear endpoint so I'll just cut it off here...
When I was around ~13, I was really active on OMGPOP and I would frequent the chatrooms that had interactive typing games and made a lot of friends. One of the friends I made was such a great singer. I could listen to her play the guitar for hours. You could make an OMGPOP chatroom yourself in the past, and I think once you reached a certain level of being on the site you could join calls, similar to discord or skype calls, but a lot lower quality of course, and we would hang out on calls often. Sometimes she would sing a song on call when people asked, and often people would get dared to sing a song whether they were good or not for laffs, so there wasn't a ton of pressure. After denying and making excuses for forever when being put on the spot for it, I eventually sang something and they all said it was actually good and were kinda surprised.
I'd never thought of recording my voice before and playing it back because I just assumed I would be terrible, so I did it one night just to see if they were just being nice, and I was really surprised. First of all, I thought I sounded really weird with my normal, talking voice. It was really jarring to hear back; I hated it a lot. But also, I wasn't amazing at singing but I wasn't as tone deaf as I thought I would be, certainly not to the degree that my overdramatic family members made it seem like I was. Maybe I was just overthinking it from the start, who knows?
I was not gonna talk about this because whenever I talk about it, I feel like I'm being really conceited, but if I'm going to hit the highlights of my childhood and life, I'm leaving out something major, at least by my standards of completion.
Music has always been an escape for me. It relieves my negative moods, keeps me calm, regulates my thinking, and keeps me focused on whatever I'm doing. In the same way, singing is really cathartic for me; it gives me an option to express myself and release any negative thoughts and emotions in a harmless, safe, way, and I truly enjoy it. For the longest time, though, I was really private about it because I thought I sucked.
My dad and brother really expressed that they didn't like it and would make fun of me for it whenever I did it, even if it was in the confines of my room or in the shower, so I just thought that I wasn't any good and that I never would be. I lacked the talent.
I don't know how many people can relate to this, but being told that you suck at the one thing that you pour the most of your time into was crushing for me at whatever age this started, and it carried over for a long time. It was disheartening to think that also that no matter how hard I worked, I would never be talented enough to be good enough for a lot of people to enjoy listening to. I didn't want to be a nuisance or annoying even if it was helpful or calming for me. I still enjoyed singing, though, and I did it whenever I could, but it's still something I'm really self conscious of and only recently have told people that I enjoy it.
