I’m still playing catch up so I will tell you about my trip last week soon! Who I am kidding, my whole life is a game of “catch up” right now. Not sure how fun it is, and why I agreed to play, but that’s where we are.

The week is going well. Not too crazy, and I have actually had some nice chunks of time to practice, and some fun rehearsals so that’s good! Louie was questioning our life choices recently and wondering why we were so busy working…he made excellent points. As I say here, I have too much going on, but I like it all mostly. Too many students, but they are all special, so…really I just need to try to relax and continue “letting things go” like I wrote about before, because the truth is that I don’t need to stress over every performance and practice so so much. It’ll be fine and I do quite a bit as it is, I think.

I also need to let go of my guilt. I often feel guilty for…basically…not being perfect and not being all things to all people. Yes, I am trying to do it all. No, I’m not succeeding all the time. Maybe it doesn’t matter! I’m making a living, I’m having wonderful musical experiences, I’m playing music with my friends and teaching kids to play the violin and (hopefully) make music a positive force in their lives. I say that so much, but I keep having to remind myself. There is so much negativity in the world, so many bad things are happening and being allowed to happen, but these kids are good people, and I can positively influence them. And music is always good. Whether it is an escape or something that pushes us to our limits, music is always good.

And I must remind myself that I am successful. I can’t possible be as busy as I am and not be successful, right? I know people are always going on about how being busy isn’t the goal, and how “busy” isn’t an answer to “how are you?” but the thing is, I’m busy, that’s part of how I am, and I’m busy because I’m trying to do it all. But in June I won’t be nearly as busy, and then there will be three months of not being so busy, and I’ll forget all about this, and just remember all the amazing things that I got to do, right? And how every time I wrote a blog post it was basically me freaking out and trying to convince myself that I was doing okay

These are my friends. I did realize this the other week. I’m not too busy to have friends. I make music with my friends.