Skip to main content

A New Phase

I'm in a coffee shop gearing up for the first rehearsal of NEXT weekened's concert in DuPage.(Tchaikovsky 5, Haydn 88, and a World Premiere Harp Concertino. Click HERE for tickets and info.) It's nice to have a little time to myself, and I had intended to use it to edit a couple of posts I had roughed out earlier, but you know what? It's been a chaotic couple of weeks, and nothing I wrote before feels like me anymore. Too angst-y, too conflicted. I'm on the upswing again, and everything feels easy and possible again. It's a new phase beginning, and I can't fight it...

Steve is a wonderful stay-at-home Dad. When he left his job as Education Director for the South Bend Symphony at the end of January I was skeptical that this change would wind up being for the better for us - but it definitely has. I think I had had hopes (though not expectations) that having him home would mean an end to the drudgery of running a house - no more cooking, no more laundry. That is not the way it's working out and probably shouldn't be - but we're sharing the load now in a way that has not previously been the case and while I still find that I'm spending time trying to practice and make reeds with an active baby underfoot I also find that I have an out. I can be with Zoe now without having to multitask obsessively, because I can also hand her off for an hour or two here and there and really buckle down when I need to. It's more a difference of how relaxed I feel than how many hours I've really reclaimed, but it's all I needed.

Zoe is sleeping through the night! At least, more nights than not. And I am too, and my energy levels are through the roof in comparison to a month ago.

Our big good dog, Jasper, was diagnosed with an aggressive form of bone cancer, and we opted to amputate his right hind leg. Prognosis is still undetermined, but he's healing well from the surgery and getting around better every day. And even this I read as optimistic - it's nice to see his pain gone and the old doggieness return to our pet. He seems happier, even just a week after the operation.

It's March! And the days are getting longer and I can see mud emerging from the snow, and it's almost Spring and everything feels more possible. I don't remember being overtly bothered by the weather this winter - it felt more like an irrelevant nuisance to me on top of my basic level of stress and internal panic than like a stressor, if that makes any sense - but I'm aware of my mood shifting when the sun comes out (occasionally) here in Indiana and that's definitely an improvement, too.

And I'm more inspired by my career than I have been in years. Motivated to make changes, ready to get out there. It's partly that having Zoe has made me want to stay closer to home, and has lessened my tolerance for driving long distances for minimal economic gains, but also that having less time in my days has sharpened my focus on what I really want to be doing which is performing in solo recitals and chamber groups. My next project involves working on my materials and self-promotional skills so that I can replace some of my daily grind with work that excites me.

I'm frequently aware of the various cycles at work in my life - monthly and seasonally, of course, but also in terms of my career arcs and project arcs, and work vs. rest days in fitness - and it's very exciting that ALL of my personal cycles feel like new beginnings right now.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Zoe's Musical Beginnings

I've mentioned before that I started out on the piano by figuring out melodies.  Connecting notes and trying to learn how they worked.  I'm fascinated to observe that Zoe's initial approach to the instrument is totally different from mine. She sits at our new piano and plays random notes, and tells us what to feel.  If she is playing slowly then the music is sad, and we should cry. When we are "crying" she either gets up and hugs us so we feel better (so awesome!) or bangs faster, to indicate that the music is now happy and we should dance.  Her other piano game is accompanying herself - she plays "chords" in alternating hands while she "sings" the ABC song or Camptown Races or Sesame Street.  She makes us sing along.  She loves it when we clap at the end.  When I was little I wanted to know how music worked. Although I make my living as a performer now, I learned about the interpersonal aspects of music later.  Her immediate interest is in ...
2 comments
Read more

Cleaning Your Reeds

Updated: I've posted a video of my plaque cleaning technique HERE ! Oboe reeds are made from organic material, and over time it is inevitable that they will age and change. The first few days of change are usually quite welcome, as you break the reed in by playing and the opening gradually settles down to something you can be comfortable with and the response becomes more and more predictable.  You might even hit a plateau where it appears to be perfectly consistent and reliable for several days! But after that, the reed seems to be on a constant gradually accelerating downslope, until it eventually collapses into a sharp, non-responsive, mushy mess. We can rejuvenate the reed during this time by cleaning it, and can often extend its life as well! There are three good ways to do this. First, least invasively, you can just run some fresh water through and over the reed AFTER you play each time.  Go ahead and rinse that reed in the sink, shake it as dry as possible, a...
6 comments
Read more

What I Did on My Summer Vacation

We took a vacation this summer.   This is not news to anyone in my life - anyone who knows me or especially Steve on Facebook followed along with all of our pictures.   We took our travel trailer out to Arizona - via St Louis, Tulsa, Amarillo, Roswell, Santa Fe - and then stayed a week in Clarksdale and Flagstaff and visited some ancient pueblo ruins, Sedona, Jerome, the Lowell Observatory, the Grand Canyon.   We swam in swimming pools, lakes, and icy mountain streams.   We hiked.   Eventually we came home again, via Albuquerque, Amarillo, Tulsa, and St Louis. (our inventiveness had somewhat worn out).   After a week at home we took another trip, and drove to Vermont via western NY and the Adirondack Park (stayed an extra day to hike a mountain), lived four days in East Franklin VT, and came home via Catskill and eastern Ohio.   This vacation felt different from all of our previous ones.   In the 21 years we’ve been married, I can name on...
6 comments
Read more