I’m having a hard time with titles lately. I suppose it’s best to write first and come up with a title later, but if you do that the box for title just yells “ENTER A POST TITLE” the entire time I’m writing. I’ll come up with something soon after I realize what I wrote about! (edited to add, I finished writing and have nothing. )

I’m stressed yet looking forward to the weekend. I realized that I used to book and play weddings all the time but lately booking them has been truly stressing me out. I don’t know why, but I feel like it’s just this huge weight, to put the music together, to make sure all the other players are going to be there, to write the checks and collect the money, it’s just causing me stress. I have TWO on Saturday, and I will be super relieved when they are over. Which is just ridiculous. I used to do this all the time!

Like I said, I’m looking forward to my two performances this weekend though, plus tomorrow night we are going to the symphony. I need to just focus on what brings me joy (I’m thinking of that book I haven’t read but everybody was talking about where you get rid of the things in your life that don’t bring you joy) : performing on my own terms, teaching mostly, reading books, eating good food, traveling, being outside in lovely weather, petting cats…and I get to do all of those things in the next few weeks if not tomorrow, so really, life is grand!

And it was brought to my attention that work-life balance is an illusion.  I haven’t read much Kierkegaard (that is to say, none) but found this quoted paragraph quite interesting:

“Marry, and you will regret it; don’t marry, you will also regret it; marry or don’t marry, you will regret it either way. Laugh at the world’s foolishness, you will regret it; weep over it, you will regret that too; laugh at the world’s foolishness or weep over it, you will regret both. Believe a woman, you will regret it; believe her not, you will also regret it… Hang yourself, you will regret it; do not hang yourself, and you will regret that too; hang yourself or don’t hang yourself, you’ll regret it either way; whether you hang yourself or do not hang yourself, you will regret both. This, gentlemen, is the essence of all philosophy.”

I’ve prided myself on not having too many regrets in my life, but I recently read a quote that said basically, if you don’t have regrets you haven’t properly lived. Or perhaps you were just a bit unbalanced in your life in the pursuit of many wonderful things, and those wonderful things you were trying to do got in the way of other things, and you regretted later that you weren’t able to do it all. Or maybe it’s much darker stuff than that, but I like to tell myself that all my choices and directions my life has taken over the years have truly been leading me here and that HERE is a good place to be, and therefore I shouldn’t regret things that could have gone differently in the past. This all works well if we are in agreement that here is indeed a good place to be. If I didn’t agree with that, then I might have regrets. Though even so, perhaps I’d be heading somewhere else, that would be good when I got there. Maybe I am truly just an optimistic person, not even a cynical optimist.

Or I’m not making any sense at all and I’m just typing a bunch of gibberish. Or I’m just navel-gazing and patting myself on the back…what really is the difference between than and being introspective? And why write a blog if I can’t have some self-indulgent navel gazing once in awhile, right? Or all the time, or at least several times a week. Other people post articles about how introverted people run the world, or about how successfully married people do this or that better than you, or the best way to save money in jars. I sit down at the end of a long day (yes, musicians have those, even though we don’t have real jobs) and type my feelings out. So here we are.

(my new haircut)

I’m exhausted and just remembered a few things I need to take care of! I promise I’ll be back soon with a mundane post about kitties, but until then 🙂

Local readers, come check out my performances this weekend, Saturday night 8 pm, Irish Quartet at the Tavern of Fine Arts, and Sunday at 3 pm, Perseid Quartet at the First Presbyterian Church in Edwardsville. Follow those links for more information!