yeah, I just need to practice, really - the same way I changed other parts of my voice. For whatever reason I’m just struggling with pitch. I think part of it is that my ear is not trained well enough - my ability to “hear” when my pitch is in the right place vs the wrong place is really weak, and so I overcompensate and shoot too high (because I can’t hear when it’s at the right pitch), and also sometimes when it’s too low it can sound higher to me on the inside … so, some of this is really about ear-training, as well.

And yes, it’s pretty typical for anyone’s speech to get lower and more monotone - esp. when listing things or at the end of sentences. So it’s just a skill to listen for that and prevent it from going too low. I worked on that with a speech language pathologist - she would have me list things and work on noticing the pitch going down and bringing it back up, and establishing a better baseline.