Category Archives: Quarantine

Hope, Quarantine

Feeling Good

I got my second shot yesterday morning, and so far, other than a sore arm (which happens to me with flu shots too) I am feeling good.

I was tired all day yesterday, but that started before the shot. I attribute it to starting back at my early morning job and having a really long day on Tuesday. I probably teach too much, and I especially taught too much on Tuesday (I had 11 hours of teaching!) but it’s not like I do that every day. I told Louie, well, nurses work 12 hour shifts and nobody tells them, oh my god how do you do that? He pointed out they work 3 of those a week, and I countered that they usually do 4 because they love the overtime, and then we decided that probably working slightly more than 3 hours a day (what many people seem to think is an appropriate amount of teaching, what, how would I make a living) and less than 11 is a more ideal amount of hours.

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I also like to look at the overall week of work. Tuesdays this semester ended up being really busy because I have 3 1/2 hours of college students normally on Tuesdays. Last semester I had zero hours of college students on Tuesdays. I can’t move all my private students around every semester, so I just fit college teaching into the regular day. It’s a bit unpredictable, because I would prefer to put the college students on Fridays, and often manage to put a lot of them there, but it doesn’t always work out for them. Overall I’m averaging 38-40 hours a week of teaching, plus a few hours of commuting time, so it seems like a lot, but is reasonable. I don’t have a ton of admin as I’ve streamlined it quite a lot, so probably only 1 to 3 hours outside of that, depending on the week (maybe more at the end of the quarter or preparing for festival). I do have weekly grading to do for my school job, but it usually only takes 15 to 20 minutes.

I should say that I haven’t been finding a lot of time for practicing though, and would like to get into a better routine for that. I don’t see myself dropping back my teaching commitments any time soon though, so maybe I should just figure it out!

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Another important thing to note is that my work is seasonal, and that college semesters are really only 8 months of the year, and school is out June through August, so I like to work a little more so in the summer it’s okay to work a little less. Last summer I didn’t really work less, but I’m sure this summer people will be back to normal camps and such so they won’t be taking weekly lessons throughout the summer and I’ll miss some of the income/have more time off.

Just some random thoughts this morning! Keep wearing masks!

*it is worth noting that today ended up being a 3 hour teaching day though it was supposed to be four, and now I’m in a short break before a rehearsal for a Good Friday service. I started this post in the morning and then got distracted by various tasks. It is also worth noting I feel great and my arm isn’t too sore anymore either, I recommend exercise with lots of arm swinging!

Hope, Quarantine

One Year Ago

One year ago today, I was visiting my friend April in Atlanta. We knew we were already in an unprecedented pandemic, and we were determined to enjoy our time together nonetheless. Around us, the world was collapsing and people were panic-buying toilet paper, and more importantly, many were sick and dying.

But then I got the call. We were sitting on the porch, and I hadn’t answered my phone because it was an unknown call. But I checked the message, assuming it would be something about my car warranty and I heard a woman say something about my cat Miles. MILES.

They had him! and the next day we picked him up and brought him back home, and then we all just stayed there. We stayed home, for weeks and weeks.

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We didn’t stay at home as much as everybody, and yet we stayed at home so much. I can’t remember the last time I did something social, not just hanging out with Louie. Yet we did do a few things over the summer.

And now things are looking up. We have both gotten a shot, thankfully, and I fully recognize how lucky we are to have managed when so many haven’t been able to yet.  It’s so much less stressful when we go into teach, now that we are somewhat immune, and soon will be totally immune, or as good as can be. I don’t know what the next steps will be, but I hope that soon I can start teaching in person again (summer?) for those that are ready, maybe still with masks and not allowing extra people in? I just don’t know, but I am feeling more positive and also choosing to feel more positive.

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My parents are fully vaccinated and will likely be visiting in April sometime. And Louie and I are planning a week long trip in early June, just to Arkansas and with flexibility…who knows what will happen, and we are fine wearing masks everywhere. I know people have been traveling this whole time, but we haven’t been. I think once we are both vaccinated maybe we will think about doing patio dining somewhere…that sounds crazy to think of, honestly. I know we aren’t there yet, but it also seems crazy to be trying to claim vaccination is the answer and yet telling people once they are vaccinated to continue acting the same way.

Sometimes I just get struck by the awfulness of everything. How many have died…how many who have been sick, how many who have and are suffering. But there is a light at the end of the tunnel, I think. We can’t let our guard down, and I know so many have not been as lucky as we have with getting vaccinated, but I am hopeful that in the few next months we will all really be recovering from this time, and starting to really turn a corner, and hopefully being in a position to help other countries too. I’m not so naive to think that the problems here and the people who refuse the vaccine won’t continue to be problems, but I’m choosing to focus on the positive. We will get there.

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If Miles could come back home after being missing for 11 months, it seems like anything is possible. Having him here has been a little bit of a miracle every day, and I am so thankful. He has gone from being a little bitey creature to a very sweet bitey creature. He loves baskets, hammocks, beds, and cuddling. He also loves attacking Muriel and running all around after her.

I’ve got to get back to do more teaching in a few minutes, so I’ll leave you there. Life is hard still, but it’s getting a little less hard.

Quarantine, Random thoughts

Getting to that One Year Mark

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One thing I’ve been thinking about lately is anxiety and worrying. We all know worrying doesn’t help, right? But being worried in order to prepare can. I’ve mentioned my timehop app here before, when I read what I posted or took pictures of 1 year ago on the day, 2 years, etc. 1 year ago yesterday I posted about how I was preparing for the pandemic, buying canned goods, toilet paper, etc. Turned out it was a pretty good idea.

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But not everything I bought was useful. I bought some jugs of water, and I didn’t need them, but I would have in Texas the other week, so I have no regrets about my water purchases. And we’ve done well, we have been fortunate enough to stay well, though at great personal sacrifice. We haven’t seen family inside or my family in person since late summer (and not much before that, but in late summer with most of us being careful it seemed a good risk.) We haven’t eaten inside a restaurant since March. Since my sister and her kids left in late summer, I haven’t been inside unmasked with anyone except Louie. I can’t remember the last time we did something social, because it got too cold to want to be outside and it felt like an unnecessary risk. I don’t quite know how we will reenter the world.

I’m thankful we have stayed well though, and I hope we continue to until we are able to get vaccinated. I don’t know what happens then. I don’t know how to be social anymore, and I don’t know how to have conversations with people that aren’t about teaching or COVID. It’ll be a strange re-entry when it happens.

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I was thinking about other times I’d been stressed about something that seemed silly. One time was on a hike in Zion a few years ago. We hiked up to Observation Point and it was a beautiful hike, scary in parts. When we got to the top we ate our lunch and took a few pictures, but the sky looked a little scary so we headed down. It seemed silly to be so worried about the weather, but then towards the end of the hike the skies opened up and it poured rain. We got on the shuttle back to our campground and it was a deluge. Rain, hail, thunder and lighting. We got to the campground and made a run for our car. I recall sitting in the car, listening to the clunk, clunk, thump of the hail on the windshield, the roof, the hood.

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The view from Observation Point.

You can read my original blog post about this experience here, but here’s what you should know. I was thinking about this hike yesterday, and remembering being stressed on the way down about the weather, and thinking, oh, that was silly, why do I overreact? And truthfully, I should have just enjoyed the walk anyway, but I was stressed because we were hurrying to get down, and the truth was it was a great idea! It was a terrible storm, and I didn’t hear of anybody getting hurt during it, but it was terrible and dangerous and we were glad to have not been outside in much of it. My anxiety was well-placed!

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Of course, there’s a nice expression about not borrowing tomorrow’s problems or whatever, but it’s really nice sometimes to know that your worrying simply meant you prepared. In the hiking case, we didn’t prepare, but we hurried down. In the case of the lead up to the terrible COVID pandemic it meant we had a lot of groceries and such on hand and didn’t have to make a run to the store.

But how do I balance feeling too worried and stressed with actually just being prepared in life? I worry (ha!) that staying home so much has made me more stressed about going out into the world! Then again, being concerned about getting COVID has done that more.

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In any case! The other one year mark coming up will be the anniversary of my cat Miles returning home. We got him back the same day we got home from our last trip, after our last meals out…how should we celebrate an anniversary of a cat’s homecoming?

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Have you changed much of your life over the past year, or have things stayed the same for you? If (like most people) many things have changed, do you think it will be difficult to get back into the world? Do you think that an appropriate level of anxiety is necessary to be responsible?

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Quarantine, Travel

National Parks

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I read a book last week by a man who visited all of the National Parks in one year. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed reading the book. It wasn’t what I expected though as it was more about him and less about the parks, and I was struck by how different my own travel experiences are. In retrospect, that shouldn’t have surprised me. And of course, his experience as a man traveling is very different than the experience as a woman traveling. Women have to worry about personal safety in a way that no man will ever have to, even when you are traveling with a man, but especially if you aren’t. So reading any travel book by a man, oh, and there are so many, is different than reading a book by a woman, such as Wild by Cheryl Strayed.

However, I was thinking about travel itself, and why I travel, and what traveling has taught me. One of my favorite things to do with Louie is go on a road trip and visit parks and other sites. We love loading up the car and hitting the road, being dirty for a few days, hiking a lot, taking tons of pictures, and finally being grateful to return home. So while visiting National Parks is wonderful, more of our life is spent at home, so how does that affect it?

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Caption: Hiking in Rocky Mountain National Park, going up to the Loch from the Glacier Gorge Trailhead. Summer 2015

The National Parks Service has this “Find Your Park” campaign, and truthfully, my park is Forest Park, which is a huge park near my home in St Louis. I love traveling, and I especially love the mountains. I love seeing wildlife, and getting out into terrain and parts of the country that are very different than where I live, but I don’t want one park. I want them all, and not in a bucket list way, but in the way that I want to experience different places. I have enjoyed returning to places like Yellowstone and Rocky Mountain National Park, but I also have enjoyed seeing new places like Jasper National Park, Colorado National Monument, and Theodore Roosevelt National Park.

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Caption: The Colorado River. I swear there’s a picture somewhere in Louie’s albums of me by the River at the bottom of the Grand Canyon, but I don’t have it. This is a picture I took at the bottom. Spoiler: going down is the easy part. May 2016

The crowds can be an issue. Everybody loves the National Parks! Camping reservations can be hard to get. So another part of the Find Your Park idea can be to find somewhere less popular that may have a more quiet beauty. This summer I am hoping we can travel some, but I’m looking at more off-the-beaten path places that won’t attract the same crowds, but more importantly, don’t require as much advance planning. I just looked at Rocky Mountain NP camping reservations and they are nearly full at my favorite campground for the summer. Not surprising, but we can’t plan a trip until we are vaccinated, and we have no idea when that will be.

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Caption: Great Smoky Mountains, and you can just see how damp it was there. This was walking around an area near Gatlinburg where the fires had burned quite a lot. Our wettest camping trip ever! Summer 2017.

Normally by this time of the year I would have my summer at least mapped out. That may sound crazy to some of you (and it may sound a bit crazy in general) but it was fairly necessary in order to make sure we could fit in various family visits and stuff. It’s all up in the air now, and I hope I get to see my family as well as do a little random traveling.

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Caption: Glacier National Park, our first views after driving all day from Yellowstone. Each place is new and wonderful, even when the one you left may still be your favorite place. Summer 2019.

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Caption: Standing on a rock at Colorado National Monument, Summer 2016.

But I’ve gotten off topic from my thoughts on the National Parks. Everybody has their own travel style: some like to rough it, others prefer middle-of-the-road comfort, others high end luxury. Some people like to go for a long weekend or a week, others have more time off in a row and can get away longer. Some love flying, others love hitting the open road. Some people like to picnic and cook, others prefer to buy all their food ready-made. Everybody has their own travel style, and of course each trip might be different. I love planning trips almost as much as I love taking them so for me the advance planning is half the fun. Other people hate planning and prefer just to show up. Where am I going with this? Nowhere, it’s my blog Smile But maybe just to say, I want to read the book about somebody who didn’t just hit the road. I want to read the book by somebody who spent as much time planning their trip as doing it! I’m sure that book exists (and I’d like it to be by a woman so I can relate more) or I guess I should write it, ha. If I wrote a book I’d have to edit though, rather than with my blog. (I’m aware people DO edit their blogs, it’s just not something I want to spend a lot of time doing. Yes, I’d probably have more followers.)

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Caption: On top of Mt. Washburn. Summer 2019.

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Caption: Louie in Bryce Canyon, Summer 2016.

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I went down a bit of a memory lane the past hour here, looking at old photos, remembering where we had been, remembering how it felt, remembering arguments we had and remembering wonderful experiences we shared. I recall my wonderment and amazement on the hike in Bryce Canyon. I recall feeling scared on a hike in Zion National Park, and feeling like I’d never be dry again in the Great Smokies. I recall being blown away by Colorado National Monument’s beauty, and also feeling incredibly dirty from not showering for days and being relieved we were out of bear country. I remember enjoying taking the bus out to Athabasca Glacier and feeling sick to my stomach now knowing that there was a horrible accident there last summer in which many people lost their lives. I remember hard work putting up our tent, putting away our tent, and everything that goes with camping, and each night I get into bed here I am grateful for how easy my regular life is.

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Caption: Canyonlands National Park, Moab, Utah, Summer 2016

I suppose traveling is never actually about where you go. I mean, it IS, but it’s really about leaving your everyday life to do something special, and try to bring a bit of it back. It’s about finding the special in the mundane as well, and being grateful for the conveniences you have at home, and being more aware of all that you have to feel grateful for.

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Caption: Canary Springs, Mammoth, Yellowstone Summer 2019

As we hope to see the beginning of the end of COVID, we will see how travel has changed, and how COVID has changed us. I don’t see trying to make a big plan for this summer, but there will be a summer soon when Louie has finished his doctorate as well, and I would love for us to hit the road for 3 weeks or so. The cats miss us while we are gone of course, and we miss them, but it’s just so nice to be immersed in not being at home, and so worth it. It does change you, though nobody stays the same anyway, travel or not.

Quarantine, Random thoughts

Saturday Morning

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When you have to wake up around 5:30 am several days a week, waking up after 7 am feels like an absolute delight. I didn’t need to get up today at any particular time, so I didn’t get up to make coffee until nearly 8 am. WEEKENDS.

I ordered seeds last night for the garden. I am planning on green beans, lima beans, and Swiss chard (Louie loves chard.) I think that’ll be it as I planted too many different things last year and only a few worked. I learned from some mistakes though, and look forward to fresh green beans as well as making some dilly beans, which are a pickled green bean with loads of garlic and dill and after they are done pickling, you can eat them right out of the jar and they are delicious.

Last weekend I made a quiche. I had broccoli and mushrooms on hand so I used those, along with a frozen pie crust I’d bought before the holidays but never used.

It was delicious!

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I also made Rhubarb muffins last weekend. I felt like doing some baking I guess! This weekend I have no baking plans, but the preserved lemons are ready so we may make my favorite chickpea and preserved lemon dish (Double it and serve with rice). We found last summer it is excellent with chutney on the side, and since I have some canned chutney that we should be eating as well, that will work. I haven’t been doing any canning lately because we have enough still.

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I have a long online class tomorrow and today we are expected to get some bad weather, so I don’t know if we will make it out of the house much this weekend. I guess we will see! I am not looking forward to the cold weather this week: we are looking at weather in the teens and lower, which we have been fortunate enough to avoid so far. Leaving the house at 6:30 am in that weather will not be fun!

I’m looking forward to next weekend: we are celebrating Valentine’s Day on Friday night with a dinner from Stone Soup Cottage. They deliver to the house, and by the time I went to order (a few weeks ago!) Saturday and Sunday were already sold out. Friday is our takeout night anyway as it’s a nice way to end the week, so we’ll celebrate that night. Stone Soup drops the food off at your house between 4 and 7 pm, then they leave directions on how to reheat everything, so it isn’t cold and soggy. We’ve done it at Louie’s mom’s house once when it was nicer outside (ate outside together) and once at our home for Louie’s birthday. I’ll let you know how it goes! Spoiler alert: it does contain steak.

I saw that the National Park Service has an app that you can download that tells you about all the various parks. I downloaded it and now I’m wanting to go visit more places. We are hoping to do a little traveling this summer, visiting some family members and maybe some sightseeing along the way, if we are vaccinated by then (and them, though pretty much everybody in my family and Louie’s dad have their first shots), and now I’m looking up random NPS sites along the way. I realized we haven’t even been to all of the NPS sites in St Louis, so that’s on the list (the Ulysses S Grant Home) once we have a decent day for it. Also COVID concerns, so maybe that’ll be something for a bit later…I know people go inside for things, but it’s a question of limiting our risk. But I especially want us to go west, as there are many parks west (Utah, Nevada, California) that we need to visit. I suspect the next few years will be particularly busy, as people get to travel again, and maybe it’ll always be busy.

Anyway! It also looks like maybe today it won’t snow until later in the day, if at all, so maybe we’ll bundle up and do something after I teach my improvisation class this morning.

Quarantine, Random thoughts, Teaching

Career musings

It’s tough being a freelancer. Or maybe I should say, it was tough? I have had several phases of my career, and this latest one is certainly less stressful in many ways.

I started out as a full-time orchestra player, right out of grad school. I also taught and added in extra gigs and tried to make as much money as possible to start paying off student loans and start saving. I was young and had energy, drive, and a great love of music. My job tried to take that away from me, and ultimately I made a very personal choice to leave. I haven’t regretted that choice, though I sometimes wonder what my life would be like if I had stayed.

I then spent a few years being a more full-time freelancer and teaching in the Cleveland area. I played all the gigs I could, was a member of up to 5 different regional orchestras, and spent a lot of time driving to and from with small groups of friends. It felt very temporary, but it was a lot of fun and I had a large amount of satisfying and fulfilling musical experiences. I worked nearly every day and worked long hours, and it had its ups and downs.

I moved to St Louis then, and hoped to continue in  much the same way, but there weren’t the same opportunities…there weren’t 5 or more regional orchestras in driving distance, and in fact only one really, and that wasn’t even really within driving distance, so I tried to up my teaching and did what I could. I played a bunch of gigs, here and there, everywhere, trying to get my name out there, and ended up being really busy as well, but not having that many satisfying or fulfilling musical experiences. Truthfully my great love is orchestral playing, but my second great love is doing things my way, and the two are hard to reconcile.

I talked with a student yesterday who had her first full orchestra playing experience before her lesson, and she described it as overwhelming. It is! I recall my first time playing in an orchestra (with winds and percussion and all) and it is overwhelming, the sound is unlike anything you can ever experience, but it is amazing. As I’ve gotten older, I have come to terms with the fact that that just isn’t something I will do very much in my life, if at all, and that just might be okay. It’s a hard thing to come to terms with, honestly, but getting upset over a $150 gig that takes up two nights a week isn’t the same as playing a Shostakovich Symphony with a group.

I have a lot of thoughts about orchestral musicians, and what work is worth, and the music world, and they are often jumbled, every changing, and not without a little bit of bitterness but also with love and hope. I won’t share most of them here, but I will just say this: I’m tired of the stress, and I’m tired of the hustle. I have been busier teaching than I’ve ever been in my life, but it’s so much happier. I miss seeing colleagues, but I don’t miss feeling so replaceable and being belittled.

I have a group I’ve played with for years that I have debated quitting for awhile, because of how it makes me feel. Sometimes I really enjoy it, and other times I feel taken advantage of. I’ve been yelled at, I’ve had a score thrown at me by the conductor, and to add insult to injury, my position wasn’t even considered worth mentioning to a new contractor. Nothing about the group ever made me feel good as a person (or hadn’t in a long time), but I hung on because I occasionally enjoyed playing the music…that’s how my performing career has felt over the past few years, maybe since I moved here.

That’s not to say that every experience has been that way, but enough for me to say, enough. I read other musicians who say how much they miss playing together. Maybe I’ve made other musicians feel bad as well, but I don’t miss being made to feel bad. I don’t miss pouring my playing into a job only to be passed over in the future to somebody new or somebody who grew up here, or somebody who was more “connected.” Maybe people read this blog and say, well, she doesn’t want to be hired anyway, she has a bad attitude, but there have been years that I have said yes to every single job I could, showed up early and prepared, practiced for hours and hours, and that didn’t matter either. And then once I stopped working, during the pandemic, I didn’t miss it. I filled up my schedule with students and there I am.

I have thought about this because there are gigs coming back. Now, some of those are an easy no, because, well, there’s a pandemic. But how to balance it? There are people I do want to play with, and there will be jobs I do want to take, but there will also be ones I don’t want to take. I know if I say no jobs will dry up, but they also dry up when I say yes, so I’m not living in fear anymore.

I’m being honest here, because this is a tough profession, and you should all know it. I don’t want the accolades and the pressure anymore. I’m tired of it. I don’t miss the audiences. Maybe that will change, maybe I’ll want something different in a few years, I don’t know. Maybe once the pandemic is over I won’t be afraid of crowds anymore, but maybe I’m just tired. I know I play well enough to play anything I want, and I’m okay with that. I’ll always be asked first if I play in the St Louis Symphony, and unless the answer is yes people won’t ever think I’m any good, so who cares what they think anyway?

So, those are my current career musings. I added it up and I’m currently teaching about 40 hours a week, counting a little bit of driving around, but not counting grading or admin work. No wonder I feel so busy! We’ll see what I decide to do next fall (I think I need to drop something) but for now, I’ll just work and work, which is something I’ve always been good at, and I will hope that I make a positive impact on some of my students. I’m not going to pretend that music is some sacred thing, that being a music teacher or musician makes me a better person, because I think that’s rationalizing something that we are worried we are wasting our time doing. (A good friend once said, “Musicians always think they are doing the Lord’s Work” and that made me think!) I think music is worthwhile and it is fun to play the violin. I think learning to play an instrument is good thing for kids to do and helps them in their lives overall and that’s a good enough reason.

But that would be going off on another tangent, so I’ll just say…lots more students to teach today, and then a nice weekend of relaxing and trying to do something fun in the cold and during the pandemic before another long week of teaching.

What about you? Do you feel like the pandemic has made you second guess your life choices or change your trajectory or work-life balance?