Kristen Seikaly is a blogger, content writer, and creative writer. She also happens to be an ex-opera singer. She’s got a MM from Westminster Choir College in Voice Performance and Pedagogy and has performed in venues such as the Kimmel Center and Academy of Music, and has participated in operatic productions with companies such as Opera Philadelphia and Princeton Opera Alliance.

In short, until only a couple of years ago, she was on the path of building a career in music and opera. 

Until she decided to QUIT. 

To hear her full story, from studying music in college, to becoming a game writer (whaaa?!) and blogger, you should definitely take a listen to Episode 5 of the podcast. 

To sum up what we learned though, here are a few of our favorite facts about our guest, Kristen Seikaly. 

As a proactive and eager singer and voice teacher (and we might add, smart) just out of college, Kristen started a blog. And get this: she actually posted! 

Eventually, this blog became Operaversity, a blog with tons of content about singing. And although Kristen isn’t creating any new posts for this particular blog anymore, it’s still packed with tons of useful info.

She walked out of a successful audition and thought, “Wow, that was underwhelming.” 

People think singers transition away from the career for two reasons: they wanted something more stable, or they didn’t have the chops. Well my friends, that’s just not true! Kristen simply followed her gut, listened to her intuition, and found that she liked something else more. The lifestyle of a writing career was more appealing to her, and the impact she makes as a writer is more meaningful to her. Those sound like good fucking reasons to me! 

She admits that it wasn’t easy to transition from “singer” to “writer.”

As most of us do, Kristen felt so much of her identity was tied to her singing, and pulling away was hard. Telling her parents, her friends, and then over and over to colleagues as she would run into them was not easy. To quote Kristen, “it takes a lot of patience, a lot of fortitude, [and] some therapy helped!”

Doesn’t that just sound like, life???

Thanks, Kristen, for coming on to talk about transitioning out of this crazy life and into another! (I mean, come on, she’s a Dungeon Master for God’s sake!)

Follow Kristen on Instagram: @kristenseikaly and @catsanddice

Photo Credit: Jason Chen Photography