Did I ever mention that I dread Mondays? I know I'm not alone in this sentiment, but I really do dread the start of the work week. Getting Jared on the bus at 7:23, helping Dave get out the door, trying to simultaneously feed or hold Jackson during the whole ordeal. With our particular schedule, the weekends are the main time that we get to spend time together as a family, to relax and enjoy being together. With the arrival of Monday morning we all get sent off our different ways and I am left to pick up the rubble from the weekend. There is such a change in feeling from the weekends to weekdays that I often wake up with a "Where am I? What have I done? What's going on?" panicky feeling. Laundry is piling up, we're out of bread and on our last gallon of milk. Do the kids have any clean clothes for school? What's going on today that I'm forgetting?
This week I am accompanying a singer and a flute player for a concert on Friday. I was asked to play in this same concert as a soloist back at the beginning of the summer. I said yes without realizing how hectic the summer would be and how long our home would be on the market. When the beginning of September arrived I still hadn't picked a piece, let alone started practicing. I was starting to have my recurring, "I have a piano jury this week and don't have my pieces memorized yet" dream again. I finally decided that I wasn't going to be able to pull it off, so I called back and bailed. This shouldn't have been so hard for me, but I have been going through a musical identity crisis of sorts. I have been developing a musical inferiority complex. It doesn't help that this concert was for the American Mothers Association, so everyone else playing in it is a mom. Is everybody just better than me or smarter than me that they can figure out how to keep up with their music and have a family at the same time? Most of the people I know now have never even heard me play the way that I used to and I sometimes doubt if I even can of it anymore.
In the course of September, I was called by two other people who are playing in the concert and asked to accompany them. Today I had my first rehearsal with the flute player. She told me over the phone that the piece she selected was easy and probably sight-reading for me (definitely a plus, given my current schedule) and she would mail me a copy. I procrastinated practicing it until this past week. After starting to work on it, I got really irritated. The piece wasn't really easy at all and had a second section that is supposed to be played pretty much as fast as you possibly can. This is supposed to be easy? Maybe easy for you? Grrr. At the rehearsal today, it turned out that she had changed pieces and this wasn't the piece that was "sight-reading." (OK, maybe I can feel a little bit better about myself.)
To be completely honest, I was intimidated to meet her. She has her doctorate in music performance, has kids, has a music school, etc. and at least in my mind, she seemed to personify "balancing it all" in a way that I just haven't figured out. I prepared to meet this terrifying person, sure that she would see that I can't really play anymore, but she turned out to be very nice, friendly and quite happy with how I played for her. Sometimes I guess I just make things harder than they need to be.
Monday, September 22, 2008
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2 comments:
You know, I don't think anyone is truly balancing it all. They just pick their priorities. Many many people think I am some expert at balancing everything I do, but I feel like I am barely holding everything together, and at any given moment it's all going to fall apart.
The recital I did last week? It was a duet recital, so I rehearsed the duets a lot with my partner, but we each did one solo. I practiced mine exactly 4 times before performance (we decided it would be okay to use music...had we decided memorization was in order I would have had a problem) and it was fine. Don't be too hard on yourself, but I do know how it feels to know that you aren't as up to snuff as you were in your college days where you had a chance to practice all day if you wanted. You're still darn good.
Ah, k-kid--you're a girl after my own heart! When you first moved into the ward, I thought, wow--here's a girl who is so musically talented, gets the community email up and going, sets up monthly cooking classes--what a go-getter. Talk about intimidating! So it is very refreshing for me to hear that--hey, we've got similar issues after all! Love the honesty--all moms need to hear that.
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