Day 24 - Ambition

Another busy day, another short post.
Just briefly, I wanted to talk about my ambitions.
Where I want to be.

In one sense, I want to carry on doing what I'm doing - only more so. Writing more music, writing more words about music, and talking to more performers and composers; teaching interesting and engaged students.

In another sense, I want to be higher up the academic food chain. I want to be a head of department one day. I want the administrative responsibility from which I have seen academics flee for my entire university life. In other words, I want to take this idea of the integrated academic with me through the promotion route.
I don't want to just do research, with no teaching or no administrative responsibilities; I want to be able to facilitate decision making, support other staff members, and enable them to work as integrated academics as well.

I want to have a Chair one day, and I really want to be an emeritus professor after I retire. I cannot see myself retiring to sudoku puzzles and orchid breeding. I want to be writing music until I drop. I want to be writing about music until I can't remember the beginning of a sentence that I'm writing. I want to be listening to music until I can't really hear it any more. I want to be teaching for as long as I have something useful to say.

This may well all change if I settle down and have a family, but right now, I want to be doing this for the long term,

This may be a bit of a sad admission in some eyes, and in others, a breaking of the social contract regarding how we talk about our ambitions. Neither of these really bother, or indeed, interest me.

Music has become so much a part of my life, that I cannot really visualise it continuing without it.