u/Mammoth_Initiative53

I have been reevaluating my life over the last several months, and have found a few things to be fairly unsettling. First, let me say I am currently in a sort of ongoing high-stress situation in life which I have no control over, nor a clear idea of when it will end. But suffice to say that it involves where in the world I will be living for the next few years.

In flipping through some old journals, I was struck by how often I express a sense of aimlessness, purposelessness, and always a hopelessness that things will ever change long term. Every big life event leads to some short lived improvement, but then something else changes, or something ends, and I'm right back to where I was. This pattern, I think, aside from being related to my temperament, is also a direct result of us (me and my spouse) ignoring the mental health red flags I've waved, or that have been waved about me, every time we've made a big life decision.

We've moved overseas multiple times, even though we knew (especially the second time) that it could be incredibly impactful on my mental health. We've chosen to live in the state of not being able to fully put down roots and settle, even though I have expressed over and over again that the thing I want most in the world is security, home, and simplicity.

Why do I do this to myself? We've made these decisions together, so I don't want anyone to think I was coerced into any of it. But we've together made decisions that I can see SO clearly now had major negative effects on my mental (and at times physical) health, and we were definitely aware of that possibility, so why the hell would we go ahead with them?

I guess I'm just questioning what to do now. I'm not working at the moment, partially because of our current situation, but also partially because I'm in the entertainment industry and where I live there is no work. But what do you do when you realise that you've basically shot yourself in the foot multiple times throughout your life? Basically I've set myself up for really poor mental health long term, and to be frank, my spouse has gone along with it.

Sorry for the rant, I'm just at a loss with what to do with my life in general, more and more.

Hi. I have just started a chamber music group, and we have a nice mix of instrumentation and voices, but we are missing some helpful bits - alto and bass voices specifically. What music is out there for soprano and tenor (that isn't an operatic duet), with or without another instrument or two, or multiple sopranos? We've been looking at some of the movements from the Brahms Liebesliederwalzer and Schumann's Spanisches Liederspiel, but even those are hard to do without having someone cover a part that isn't their voice type.

I want to keep it in the classical genre, but not opera. Choral is fine, but I'm specifically looking for small ensemble type stuff, one to a part, or like a couple voices, piano, and another instrument. Been scouring IMSLP and will keep doing so!