Archives for June 2020

I woke up early and then decided to look at my phone first thing. As always that meant my morning routine went out the window. I did manage to make breakfast in time for the boy but barely. He left for school, my husband showed up. I sat there and knitted a sleeve while he had breakfast, we talked.

I did dishes and such, went to the health food store, came back, found that I had forgotten to get chocolate and went right back. Then I helped to get the kohlrabi my husband had picked from the garden ready for lunch. Folded some laundry, re-arranged some stuff in my studio for teaching and ate lunch:

Yum. I only had a few minutes to breathe before I had to start teaching. I basically alternated between video and in-person lessons all afternoon which meant a lot of moving things around, disinfecting and opening the window. It is a little disconcerting that both the setup that I have developed over years and the setup I’ve had for the past months have to be changed again. I guess I’ll get used to it eventually.

After signing off with the last student I realized that I hadn’t backed my computer up in ages. The backup drive just sits there and every day when I set the laptop up for teaching I get an automatic backup. Well, turns out that doesn’t work when you don’t connect the two devices. So I waited a bit until everything was safe. Decided to eat dinner after all, getting back to skipping dinner seems just a little too hard right now. When I went to get some buns from the freezer I found that my husband had forgotten to hang the load of laundry up that he had started before lunch. So I hung up laundry while waiting for the buns to be ready. Then I finally had dinner, watched something on Facebook, started writing this post, did all the dishes, wrote in my journal and went to bed too late.

Oh, and did I mention that I somehow threw out my back? No idea how but everything hurt. Moving, sitting, leaning over, keeping still, fun times. And the green handspun socks that I was wearing developed a big, fat hole. Still, that’s all fixable.

So. Today is a running day, we’ll see how that goes. I have quite a few students but way less than yesterday. And I’ll be done with teaching at six already because my last student of the day canceled because he had his wisdom teeth extracted. That’s no good for singing.

I tried sleeping in but was awake early anyway. Then I picked up my phone and barely rolled out of bed more than two hours later. Not the best start into the day. I am installing a ‚no phone before breakfast‘-policy. Again.

The morning didn’t go much better but I did get the podcast ready. I folded all the laundry and tidied the clothes in the master bedroom. I’m not quite sure what to do with the pile of clothes that have holes and might be good for recycling and I’m not quite sure when I’ll finally wrangle the mending pile into submission but things are looking much better already.

My husband made lunch and it was very good if rather spicy:

That there is the first fresh zucchini from our garden this year.

I took a bit of a break after doing the dishes, answered student email and finally remembered that getting the podcast ready doesn’t make a difference unless I also publish it. My husband wandered in and out of the kitchen again but this time I was prepared and just put everything down and gave him my full attention whenever he showed up. It helped that I had a bunch of small tasks to do and not a big one.

I planned the week out, started a list of students to remember who wants to come in and who wants to continue video lessons and then I finally went to my studio to rearrange things and test the keyboard setup.

First: I hate the new arrangement in my studio, the ergonomics are awful and I can barely reach the shelf with my sheet music. But since the piano can’t be moved, the distance has to be kept, I don’t want to turn my back to my students all throughout the lesson and it would be unwise to put the keyboard right in front of the door there is really only one spot for it.

Second: I remember testing the MIDI to USB-thingie I had bought when I got it. So I knew it would work. It took me ninety minutes and a lot of research and trying things out to actually get the whole thing going. And then I didn’t really have time to tidy the room and rearrange the piles of sheet music, the two mike stands and all. I’ll have to do that today.

The boy and I watched an episode of Voyager that was pretty good all in all. Only four more episode to go and then we’ll have watched them all.

I did dishes, dawdled a bit, started writing this post and then wandered off to bed. I’d like to do more reading, I’m crawling to the current fiction book at a snail’s pace. I have so many books I can’t wait to read but I’d like to finish this one first. I should read less news, probably.

So. Today there will be the first day of school for the boy again, running and the first day of teaching.

But it didn’t. Phew.

My alarm went off early but I just stayed in bed an hour longer. I’m a bit tired of pushing myself. Not that it actually makes a difference. So I skipped most of my morning routine. No yoga, no morning pages, no meditation. I made breakfast and ate it and then I pulled out the novel-in-progress and started reading and light editing.

I got the first round of that in before my husband started making his breakfast. The boy was even on time so at around ten I started doing dishes and such, then went off for my walk/run. I have now reached the stage where I have to run for 2 1/2 minutes and then walk 2 1/2 minutes. Again. For once I ran all the running intervals without any walking. Very good:

The weather was wonderful, sunny and warm, and there were lots and lots of people out riding their bikes, walking and running:

I’m still practicing selfies as well:

You can see that I’d rather run when it’s cool outside. But the sun was nice.

Back home I dived head first into the pizza-making. My husband was making the dough and the sauce and I sliced and diced and opened jars. Pizza was good as always:

The boy had mushrooms on his.

My plan was to be super-productive and disciplined in the afternoon.

Well.

I started out with doing the lunch dishes right away and talking with the boy, so that was good. Then, my husband was back to tell me something. I took a bit of a break. I planned to then watch a video, take a shower, write the email to my students and get the podcast all edited and ready to go.

So I started watching the video, my husband showed up and wanted my help. I altered a list for him, printed it out, dealt with some other paperwork and went back to the video. Twenty minutes later he came to tell me something. Then the boy showed up. I finally took my shower around 4.30. Sat down and tried to focus, was interrupted, tried again, my husband showed up with a load of laundry so I helped him hang it up. And then it was almost time for dinner.

Now, the big question is why I never told anyone to please leave me alone because I wanted to do some focused work. And the answer is because every time somebody was interrupting me I was in the middle of doing something else. My husband is fond of saying that I start every task with a break and he might be onto something. It feels as if I’m procrastinating all the time. But.

As I was observing myself I found that those moments where I tell myself I’ll start soon but I’ll watch this video beforehand? In those moments I was thinking about what I actually wanted to get done in the back of my mind. No, I don’t think that’s an excuse.

For example I was playing a game on my iPad and just about to start writing the email when I was interrupted. I can’t blame anyone for interrupting me in the middle of a video game. But I’m starting to think that maybe those video games and such might be necessary for my thinking process. I had been thinking about that email for two weeks. I was even working on it while out running in the morning. It still took me a couple more hours to get to the point where I could actually write it down. I don’t even need time to sit down and think, I need time to do things that only occupy half of my brain so that the rest can work things through.

Or at least that’s my newest theory. I’ll have to do some experimentation on that.

So. It was time for dinner and watching ‚Firefly‘ and I hadn’t even started doing any of the big things on my list for the day.

Firefly was excellent as ever.

And afterwards I sat down and wrote that email, watched another video, edited the audio for the podcast and got everything to a point where I only need to listen to it once more all the way through and then I can publish it later today.

Never mind that it was pretty late by then. I watched yet another video, a fun one about Iron Age hairstyles:

Remembered to start this post and finally got ready for bed.

Today there will be some yoga, the publishing of the podcast and some more thinking. Also, watching something with the boy before school starts again tomorrow.