It’s hard, isn’t it, feeling like the world is terrible and that you can’t do much to change it? Babies being locked up for 85 days without being bathed…and I don’t want to look up more news stories to link to. We all live here, we all hear about it. Things are not good in the world, and it seems like those in power are fine with it as long as they keep getting their money!

So, this probably weighs on me. Honestly, I’ve been stressed out since Election Night. It ebbs and flows, but it’s always there. And then that stress carries into other aspects of my life. I start freaking out because I haven’t had a proper gig in weeks—what if I never get hired again? (Never mind that I have a wonderful fall schedule already lined up, with some stuff I’m super excited about…) My inner critic starts telling me that people don’t like me because I post too much about politics on facebook. Or that they aren’t hiring me because they think I’m on vacation too often, or because I write this blog about myself and they are laughing at me or judging me for telling the world my insecurities, or because there are new, younger people in town that they’d rather work with and who are more available than I am. And honestly, some of those things might be true, and I need to allow that to be okay.  It’s okay for other people to work. It’s okay for me to have a little breathing room. I just start worrying that I’m not going to be working again…I feel like my work here is so precarious and took so long to get to a point where I could support myself (that literally took nearly 5 years to get to that point, even though I was mostly supporting myself anyway, even though that wasn’t actually part of the deal with moving here for somebody else’s job!) that I spend too much time worrying. My financial situation is fine now, but I’m constantly worried everything will go away! I know it’s not entirely rational and I also know a big part of my worry is general worry about the state of life in this country and what will happen next…I’m just a worrier, and it comes and goes, but never entirely leaves me.

This was an easy week, as all of them have been since I got back from vacation. I only taught 22 students, which seemed like basically nothing. And I’ve done quite a lot of working out, some cleaning up around the house, very little practice (I’m taking it easy on that too, it seems), lots of reading, and of course, there was the 4th of July holiday in there. And oh my gosh it’s been hot outside, so I’ve been avoiding it when possible. Tomorrow is our annual 4th of July party on the Saturday after the 4th, and next week I have a gig and a recording session with Third Millenium World’s Fair to look forward to, along with another 22 or so students—July is the lightest teaching month as so many people are traveling or at camps or whatever, and it really is okay. I am currently at capacity for my teaching studio, which means that probably sometime next year I will start to panic that I don’t have enough students. I suppose it’s possible I will simply keep doing this over and over again until I retire, but it’s also possible that in another 5 years I’ll feel more settled as by then I’ll have a good decade of being successful in this town under my belt…watch this space! (Unless we all get sent away, or we flee to another country, or the internet gets ruined by the end of net neutrality and I can’t access my blog anymore, or we all die in a nuclear war.)

So I mentioned the cats. I got Miles neutered last week and they were devastated to be apart for a few days, but since then things are getting back to normal: sleep all day and fight all night, it seems! They are truly the highlight right now—so much fun, so cute, so precious.

Miles finally learned about sleeping on a bed and naturally found it to be pretty amazing.

These two like sharing a chair! This is my chair I sit in while teaching and they really dislike having to move.

I know that what I mostly need to do is relax and focus on the positive, at least when it comes to work and everyday life. But it’s so hard! This is the other most difficult thing about freelancing: feeling like you are at the mercy of everybody else (other being the constant feeling of rejection and not being good enough.) Honestly, if I just taught I’d probably be a lot more even-keeled and steady, but the trouble is that I absolutely love playing the violin and performing. That’s why I do it. If I didn’t love it, if I didn’t feel that it was absolutely missing from my life when I wasn’t playing (and maybe that’s the truth of why my month has felt empty, I’m not practicing enough?), I couldn’t do what I do.

In any case, it’s Friday. And I made a pudding dessert and a pasta salad for the party tomorrow, and I have a short rehearsal soon and then I suppose we might go out to dinner. So I think I’ll choose to be happy for a bit, and choose to reflect on my blessings, and you can comment below what you do when you have self doubt, stress, and feel like you struggle more than many others do?