Post-vacation mid-life blues

I try not to whine much in lj, not that I whine much in real life either, but we all have our days. Perhaps its just that I had a fabulous time at Mythcon and spending time on the California coast and now I'm preparing for a new semester of teaching. Back to real life.The big question that comes up every couple of months or so is: what do I really want to do with my life and will it involve spending more years and money on school and can I really be doing the same thing I'm doing now 20 years from now and don't I need to get a real job with benefits one of these days before I die?Don't get me wrong - I love what I do for a living. Teaching voice is fun, and I'm good at it. I'm making decent money even if it means working crazy hours sometimes and depending on my husband's employer for benefits. I get a couple of nice performing opportunities a year. But I'm just not that interested in pushing my career as a singer forward. I'm happy to take what opportunities come my way, but I'm not practicing for hours trying to get my voice in shape for that important audition or making lists of people to sing for. I've let a couple opportunities pass me by because I just didn't need any more on my plate. I guess I'm past the point in my life where I'm really excited about spending hours honing my skills as a performer. I'm ready to sit back and teach others and maybe direct some productions.However, if I want to get a better voice teaching job, the quandary is that I would have to go for a doctorate in Vocal Performance. I'd have to actually work on getting my voice back in shape for challenging repertoire and compete for opera roles and so forth. I was excited about that sort of thing, err, 10 or 15 years ago. I'm not now.The other options would be to go back to school for creative writing or maybe something else entirely. I would probably have to take a few undergrad courses, which at least I could do for practically free where Stephan teaches. I like writing, but like singing, I think I am a better critiquer of others' work than of my own. I'm generally good at things academic, like writing papers, research, etc. and I work better when I have deadlines in front of me. The only thing I didn't like about grad school getting my masters in music was having people with big egos and bigger tempers yell in my face.Oh well I suppose I'll figure it out one of these years, hopefully before I get too much older.