Vacation is Over!

Hello, my friends! After what feels like a very long break, I am returning to the blogosphere once again. I feel as though I have inspiration to write again after taking some much needed time to just be with myself and my parents. Sometimes, disappearing and retreating is just what a self-professed introvert needs.

I loaded up the car in mid-May and headed to my childhood home in Crawfordsville, Arkansas. I took over the dining room table with my computer and other materials and continued writing almost every day into early June. I quickly realized that I needed some time for myself. I needed to deal with the passing of a high school friend that was just a year older than me due to complications with COVID-19. I needed to mourn all that I felt I had lost and was learning to cope with in isolation. Quite simply, I needed to allow myself some time to heal emotionally. That’s not always the easiest thing to admit to yourself. It can be even more challenging when you know that your environment is largely limited to four walls.

I continued to teach a few piano lessons virtually, but did very little personal practicing. I just needed to step away from the instrument for a bit and listen to the sounds of my own breathing and spend as much time as I could with my mother. (I do not have a problem admitting that I have always been a Momma’s boy and always will be.) I would play occasionally to feel as though my hands could still move along the keyboard, but I settled in my mind that anything that needed my attention could wait until August. If the performance suffers because of it, so be it. I needed to choose to take care of my own health….and that’s not a decision I regret at all.

I returned to Plainview on Saturday afternoon and got everything unloaded into my apartment to begin another semester of work at Wayland in the coming week. There are a lot of exciting things on the horizon that I am looking forward to sharing with you. There is a bit of apprehension in the air of how the continuing pandemic will impact my work, emotions, family, friends, and students. The uncertainty can be crippling at times. I am finding myself in a better place to face things now than I was in May.

Part of the plan to better deal with my emotions is to blog on all of my various sites more regularly. Notice….that’s the plan. We all know that plans don’t always work out, but it at least gives us a plan of somewhere to start. All of my posts appear with links in my Twitter feed, so you can follow everything there.  If you are just interested in what’s going on in my personal world, make sure that you subscribe to Livin’ Life. The plan is to upload new content on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday with some bonus posts appearing on the weekends. (For those that have asked, the weekly “Hits and Misses” will begin to reappear as well. I’m glad to hear that you have missed them.)  My other blogs are of a more specialized nature. Collaborations will have new posts on Tuesdays focused on my work as a performer and musician with special attention given to the role of the piano in the chamber ensemble. On Thursdays, a new blog will begin to appear – The Piano Teachers’ Bookshelf. I think the name tells you everything about it. It will feature reviews of supplemental pieces for elementary, intermediate, and early advanced piano students that can be used in your own teaching studios. Performance videos of the featured pieces will also be included. For those interested in what I am reading or stitching at the moment, make sure that you check out Reading for Me and Procrastinated XStitch Projects. Lastly, there is another site that I have not shared with many people.  Word of God, Speak is a place where I share my thoughts from Bible study that I want to remember, reflect on, or expound. There is no set routine here….but the spark of a new post took root this morning. Hope that you will see something there later this week.

I know it is a massive plan and that I will inevitably miss days. My hope is that having a goal will mean that I will hit the mark more often than missing it. I invite you to come along for the ride.