I had to take my cat, Muriel, back to the vet to get her stitches out from getting spayed. She happily walked into her carrier, but then when I passed her to the vet tech, she hissed, and a few minutes later the vet tech came back to ask if she was always this “feisty.” Evidently she was hissing and growling at them and they couldn’t do anything! I left her there after speaking with the vet—they are going to give her a little laughing gas and then they can take a look at everything. She is such a pleasant kitty normally—true, perhaps a little rambunctious, but very sweet! The other thing that I find a little unsettling is that while I’m her owner and I’m taking her to the vet and all these things, I don’t know how well she really likes me or considers me a source of comfort or even terribly familiar. Having a new pet is different for sure!

It’s Friday already, but I again work through the weekend, so I’m really looking forward to NEXT weekend! I don’t have much work at all, I get to see my friend April who is visiting (actually that’s before the weekend), I have a couple of fun things with friends planned…all in all it’ll be a nice time. I am still too busy at home, but you can see I have time to blog and take animals to the vet, so things are more under control.

Have I mentioned that I’m looking forward to the summer? It’s basically here, since college is done, but it’s not exactly quite here. People are vague on when summer starts, understandably. Is it when school ends? After Memorial Day? June 21 (or 22, is it?). For me, I think it really has to do with the school schedule, because that’s when the students start taking less lessons, traveling more, going to camps, and my schedule totally changes.

I felt like last summer I tried to do a bunch of fun things but ended up just feeling like I was working too much. I don’t mind working, but sometimes it feels like I work a ton in the summer but hardly make any money because the work is spread out and there are hours of nothing but I can’t do anything better because I have work later. If that even makes one iota of sense! This summer I’m trying hard to consolidate things. I’m getting rid of Friday teaching, so everybody will be Monday through Thursday. I have some gigs and whatnot scheduled, but I have less weddings that in the past—I do assume I’ll pick up a few things, but I’m going to try to maintain some downtime and some free weekends to be a normal person. We just bought tickets for two operas at Opera Theatre—I love modern opera, so we got one for An American Soldier, and Louie picked Orfeo and Euridice. I was thinking back to previous summers and what stood out in my memories and going to the opera was oddly one of those things.

I’m also hoping to get to the Shakespeare Festival this year. I have a few tentative dates in mind for that—well, one in particular, and I hope that the weather holds up! Outdoor festivals are certainly a fun activity and a memorable one. We have so many cool things to do in the summer here, and hopefully I can take advantage of more of them.

You can’t always plan what activities will be the most fun (I do suffer from the issue of trying to over-plan life) but I think you can make an effort to do fun things and not just sit around watching Netflix. Though I’d love to do a bit of that too…I look forward to having enough down time to just sit around and watch tv too  

In all honesty though, it is very telling to me how much more relaxed I’ve been once the colleges were done. I love teaching college students, and frankly I enjoy the feeling of prestige I get from being a “college violin teacher” but it really adds a lot to my already busy schedule. This isn’t a readily solvable problem (without quitting things I don’t want to quit, and the money is useful), so for now, I’m just going to appreciate waking up and not feeling super stressed out and feeling like I’m actually on top of a few things in my life instead of being behind on everything!

I often read career advice blog posts and facebook posts. Here’s my career advice for any readers: keep a good calendar. Show up early to gigs. Practice and be prepared for whatever comes up. Be friendly to your colleagues.

Maybe I’ll expand upon that in a longer post. While I haven’t found much in the way of the popular “work-life balance”, I’ve found a lot of work!

In any case, I’m off to get Muriel, lunch with a friend, teach a few students, practice, and play another show. Tomorrow morning we are planning a bike ride, then it’s two shows. Sunday is a student and two more shows and then the Phantom run is over! I’m really loving playing it—it’s one of my favorite musicals that I’ve played, and I guess all the haters can hate