Music is the same. I can't tell you much about anything I've started to like recently because I've only listened to his music (some I like, some I don't) and my old stuff. My playlists and CD's are unchanged. I love music too much for this to be OK. Deciding to join my church's choir this semester nearly flooded me with pent-up music love. I've missed it all terribly. Now, with four years or more of new music behind me, I don't know where to start. I never even got a chance to start listening to Radiohead, and now it's old news.
A kind coworker and friend, who has also been part of the crew encouraging me to learn to dance, loaned me a full-size keyboard today. I don't know why, but a home seems not quite complete without a piano. It isn't that I even play the thing well--but just that's there. It's a fixture that belongs in a home. My home, my grandparents' home, most of my relatives, neighbors, friends--everyone had a piano. Everyone had taken lessons at some point. I quit in 6th grade...picked up again my senior year. Never lost the basic ability to plunk out a tune by ear.
I do think the keyboard will stifle my desire to learn the mandolin. I know how the keyboard works, I just have to practice a lot. I'm not a natural. Mandolin will take a great deal of practice. I'm still working on understanding what's where. I look at a piano and know every note. I can pick out the melody of anything. Not so with the small, stringed beast.
In line with learning to dance, learning a different instrument is crucial to my skill as a teacher. If I don't continue to learn new things, I will forget where my students are, and I will be a poor teacher. Writing teachers should be writers, of course--we should at least attempt the craft--but teachers should always be learners. Empathy is the best attribute of a good teacher. An empathetic teacher has a hard time failing her students. I can't have that empathy if I don't learn something new. I forget how completely lost, blind, stupid, slow, and hopeless I feel when trying to do something that comes simply to someone who has practiced more than I have. It's one thing to tell my students, "Just write," when the idea is pure hell to them. If I can relate it to looking at dance floor, a sweaty-handed partner, trying to comprehend the new vocabulary of dance, then I have their attention whether I actually draw the parallel for them or not. Students of all ages (but especially middle school kids) are excellent bullshit detectors. I can't stand up there and tell them I understand their fears when I don't. If you need to work on your truthiness, go teach 7th grade. My adult students (many who are older than me or near my age) are just as critical of my honesty, just more polite about it.
My ability to avoid boredom is still intact. I have ten more days of no work, and I'm far from bored. I'm thrilled. I can read whatever I want, listen to what I want, watch what I want (well, after K is asleep...when he's awake, Fireman Sam and Curious George get all the air time). If I hadn't bent a wheel on my car, I'd be driving wherever I want. I have missed this freedom. I'm slowly leaving survival mode, which I've been in since before K was born. I think I do pretty well in crisis mode, but I'd rather take small ones, like a broken car, a few stitches at the ER, or finding out that Chick-fil-A closes at 10 and not 10:30. Not a surprise child.
I hope this weekend involves plenty of conversation, skiing, reading, and hot springs. All are good for my soul. Sunny and cold. My favorite.
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