How My Hobby Helps My Long-Distance Relationship

I sing in an International champion Sweet Adelines Chorus - The RichTones, here in Dallas. For those of you unfamiliar with the genre, it's female barbershop. You can learn more about it here - Sweet Adelines International. We are once again preparing for International competition that takes place October 20-24, 2009 in Nashville, TN and we are seeking our 5th gold medal!

There are several reasons why this is significant but I'm only going to touch on one today. One of the categories on which we're judged is Expression... how well we're expressing the meaning of the music we're singing. Believe it or not, there are many people out there who sing well technically but can't seem to portray the emotion of the lyrics. I don't really have a problem here, in large part due to my long-distance relationship.

Bear with me a moment while I give you a brief primer on barbershop contest music. There are two types of contest pieces - ballads and uptunes. You can probably guess that uptunes are fast-paced, happy, peppy numbers. Ballads, on the other hand, are by definition, slow songs that tell a story, most often a love story.

And here's where my LDR comes into play. One of our contest pieces opens with the words, "Though you're far away, you're always in my heart." As you can imagine, these words hit very close to home for me. In fact, the whole time I'm singing this song, I'm thinking about Mike and the emotion pours out of me. Later lyrics talk about how my heart beats each time we meet. At that point I think about how I feel when I'm at the airport waiting to see my sweet love's face once again.

The amazing thing is, by the end of rehearsal I feel closer to Mike and more in love than ever.

There's a point to all this and a helpful tip. A great way to stay connected and close to your faraway love is to keep the loving feelings at the forefront of your mind. If you're upset or discouraged with your sweetie or the relationship, do something that reminds you of the loving times you've had together. Even if you're not a singer, just listening to a love song while looking at a picture of your love can be enough. Try it, you will be pleasantly surprised how well it works.