I’d been dreading/looking forward to yesterday for some time. I played concertmaster in a small orchestra for a performance of Swan Lake with a visiting ballet company, two rehearsals and a performance all in one day. Dreading: long day, big solos (stress!). Looking forward to: amazing music, big solos (fun!). Yes, I know I put big solos on there twice.

Anyway, today is weird, because it’s like, that’s over, it went really well, I was pleased with my performance and the level of preparation I was able to do with the time I have, and it was really fun. And then, now today is a normal day, and it’s kind of weird. My fingertips hurt though.

On other notes, I can’t believe next week is the last week of classes at my college job. WHAT. And then just over a month until we go to Japan. We have a terrific itinerary planned, and I am just really so excited about it. I am also excited that some of the busy gig time is finally winding down, yesterday pretty much capped off the insanity. And this weekend is the NFMC Festival for my students–only 5 are performing this year, 2 backed out due to not being or not feeling prepared. It’s been a tough year for my students, everybody is so busy and stressed out and I’m not sure I’m doing the best job helping them through it.

But summer is almost here, and with it, always, some regrouping. The summer is pretty low-key work wise, hardly anything outside of teaching right now, though I know more will pop up. We are always traveling more than in the past, and I’m THRILLED about it (obsessively researching as well) but it leaves less time for work. As I near my “late 40s” I am really thinking about what do I want to do the time I have left in my career, as well as simply, the time I have left, whatever that is. I’ve been wanting to travel more, so that’s one thing I’m doing, and I’m thrilled about it, beyond excited about our summer trips, and other plans. I’m also terrified, that fuel shortages will derail it, it wouldn’t be the first time the orange menace ruined our summer plans (COVID), and who knows what will happen.

How is April going for you? Did you survive Tax Day?

It was SLEETING when I left my gig last night! Truly March comes in like a lion, and hopefully out like a lamb. Let this apply to world events as well, please.

I know you are eagerly awaiting the remainder of the story of my Morocco trip, and I plan to finish another post this week, if not two. It’s been a crazy two weeks: I was playing Phantom of the Opera at the Fox Theater, which adds 8 shows a week to my schedule (in addition to the rehearsals at the start), so my life has been, shall we say, a bit full. But we finished last night, and it was a fun experience, and I’d like to say that this week is all full of free time to relax and catch up on everything, but no, I have two concerts this week also. But I have more evenings free, so life will return as normal.

The weather has been typically insane here: one day was like late spring, highs over 70. And then sleeting last night, as I mentioned. It is so important to check the weather before leaving the house, and pack a jacket just in case, probably.

I feel like we all spent a lot of time distracting ourselves from the horrors that the current president is inflicting on the world. It’s hard.

I’m taking a little break from telling you about my Morocco trip to telling you about life now. It’s been COLD and the good thing is that today gets above freezing so more of this snow should melt. Snow: it’s great at first and then it is annoying and you just want to wear normal shoes.

We got about 8 inches of snow last weekend, and it was a “snow day weekend” where everything was canceled, and it was pretty nice to just hang out at home. I didn’t even leave the house for 3 days, and that literally means, didn’t step outside. Louie took a walk over to Forest Park and took some nice pictures, but I didn’t want to get cold and wet.

It’s another busy teaching semester: at first when I was setting up my college students I thought I was at a lower number of hours than last semester, and was fairly happy about that as I have too many students, and then in the last two days of drop/add period I got 3 more hour long students and now I’m actually higher than last semester by 30 minutes with one more student. I got everybody scheduled fairly well, but my Thursday starts very early…but we are already 3 weeks in so only 11-12 weeks left to go (every student is supposed to get 14 lessons, so some have gotten 3 and others only 2).

There’s been some time for fun: we’ve done a few Jazz Stl shows, we saw a hilarious play at Upstream Theater. We’ve eaten some dinners out just the two of us and also with friends. We did a jazz brunch with a friend yesterday, and we’ve watched a bunch of good TV shows. I’ve spent some time making decisions on our Japan trip in May, and planning some other trips further down the pipeline.

And some performing too: last weekend a concert got canceled but we managed to schedule the entire chorale and orchestra to yesterday! That meant yesterday was a double concert, one with the Metropolitan Orchestra of St Louis, which was especially fun as a student of mine got to play with us too. And then the American Kantorei concert, all Bach Cantatas. Louie and I ended the night hanging out in front of the fireplace chatting.

The cats have been keeping warm the best way they know how: by sitting directly on top of the radiators. It’s adorable.

Note: It’s hard to pretend like life is normal as our country is run by a fascist government. And even worse, is knowing that many people in the country don’t see it, or WORSE, see it and agree that it is great. Every day brings new horrors in the news, children being kept in detention centers, the Epstein files and seeing that apparently almost everybody in the current admin/regime is a sexual predator, the government shutting down and the democrats being more concerned about sending money to Israel who is committing a genocide, the threat of nuclear war with Iran and other countries, the president stealing money from Venezuela and trying to loot the treasury even more, taking money from all the businesses, foreign countries, etc. And seeing people being gassed in the street, murdered in the street by ICE and by police, every day. Journalists and comedians being arrested and sued for exercising their free speech. I could go on for a long time.

I find it’s hard to cope. What do we do? We just keep on keeping on, right? And trying to find joy in our lives amongst the pain and suffering.

This semester.

One thing everybody says musicians do wrong is consider “busy-ness” as a mark of honor. How are you? “Busy” “Good!”

Except it’s not just musicians. It’s Americans. We are all too busy. There are a lot of reasons for that. Some of it is the culture, we feel like we need to stay busy to keep up. We feel like we need to do all of these activities to make sure that our kids are doing all the THINGS that the other kids are doing. Or we need to stay busy for work reasons: if you are a freelancer you stay busy to work more, to make more money. Maybe to buy more stuff, maybe to save more, to save for a rainy day, to save for when you get sick and have to pay for that surgery, that out of pocket bill, that unexpected health emergency, losing a job and the associated insurance, etc. Really all of everybody’s money worries are health care, right? Or is that just in our household?

Maybe you stay busy just to avoid looking directly at the horrors going on in your country. Maybe if you take on more students than ever, more gigs than ever, maybe if you pack your schedule just a little bit fuller you can avoid reading one more news article about the human rights violations in our country, the people being deported who have lived here for decades who are also possibly citizens, the people being murdered on fishing boats, the people being held indefinitely for who knows why, maybe just being brown skinned people who might have overstayed a visa, but also just might be citizens. And in no particular order: the articles about wide spread corruption, the attacks on the press, the freedom of speech, attacks on women, college campuses, reproductive rights, the economic downturn, my friends who have lost their jobs, attacks on trans people and lgbtq rights, the weaponization of the justice department, attacks on vaccines and the dismantling of the CDC and the NIH, the complete corruption of the Supreme Court, and…I could go on.

So maybe when we say we are busy, maybe we are avoiding that. Some of us might be. Are we hiding our heads in the sand? Probably. Do we wish we could do more? Of course we do. But sometimes what that more is is doing what we are already doing: teaching music to kids, one kid at a time. Playing music. I voted, so many times. I’ve made calls. I’ve shown up at protests–and I’ll keep doing what I can of those things, but I think what I can do now is my thing, to touch people, one on one. My students will grow up to be better people because of music, I hope. I hope.

So I’ll just keep being busy. It is the best thing for me. Busy keeps me sane. The best part of having 34 hours of teaching is that when December comes around and some of those students are done (thanks Wash U for being done earlier!) it makes the Christmas season feel a little easier!

We had an absolutely gorgeous fall day on Saturday. The sun was shining, the leaves on the trees were a variety of beautiful colors. I had ONE small thing on my calendar, a two hour morning rehearsal, and then, the day off! I made a corn casserole for a neighborhood event (yes, our neighborhood has events)–we had a chili cook-off, and while I did not enter a chili, I made a side dish. I relaxed in the afternoon, enjoyed my down time. Regular readers know this is a rare occasion.

Now, I also spent some time catching up on emails and a FEW work related things, because being self employed really means work never stops, but I also read a bit and relaxed. And did laundry, and dishes, and such. And then in the late afternoon Louie and I walked over to the little park where the chili cook-off was being held and enjoyed the chilis and the side dishes and the animals (alpacas and turtles and goats and rabbits you could pet!) and chatted with neighbors and his family who also live in our neighborhood.

And then it got dark, because yes, winter is coming and it is now pitch black by 5:30 and then we went home and watched TV for a few hours and it was just simply glorious to be at home and we heard the wind outside and it sounded quite ominous.

And the next day it was cold. Very cold, the radiators were kicking in, and the cats love that, yes, but…what? It was cold, and windy, and the temperatures were in the 30s with “feels like 18” and that seemed not like a glorious fall day at all. And it was overcast, partly sunny, and it was my first day off in a long time, and I wanted to sleep in, but of course I woke up at 7 am because of whatever, hormones, patterns, the state of the world, the dry air. But nonetheless it was still a nice day, and did I practice for my upcoming performances that I am stressed out about? No, I did not.

We went for a long walk around Forest Park, which was pleasant at first until it was very cold and windy, and I did way too much research/brainstorming for a trip next summer, and I read and browsed the internet, and emailed getting things scheduled properly for this week which is a disaster.

And now it is Monday. And it will be a good week. I hope. Maybe. It looks like at least marriage equality will stand!!! So this supreme court may be evil and corrupt, but they aren’t ruined everything!