Practicing and Money

Rainy days in New York.  I can't get enough of them.  Especially when they are on a nothing-to-do Sunday.

Yesterday two significant things happened besides going to Roosevelt Island.  I recorded my expenses and income from the past two months and I started serious practice for the upcoming recital that Andrew and I will be doing in two weeks in Cambridge.  In a need to augment the program, we've suddenly added another piece from our repertoire, the Brahms F Major sonata, and suddenly this performance has become a true performance, not such a tack-on to the graduation trip that it originally was.

The connection between these two and the place where I currently am in teaching and such has suggested that it may be time to do more to be a cellist again.  Firstly to make money, but secondly, to acknowledge that this is something that I do, an identity that I have cultivated over my life time.  These past few months have been the first period in my life where I have had the choice of taking a break from being a cellist and oddly enough it wasn't until yesterday, as I was enjoying a earnest practice session, that I realized this about my life so far.

Japan broke apart a lot of the momentum of my life, which was appreciated.  We get going on a path, a way of thinking and doing, and keep going and going without having a chance to step back and see what we are doing.  Japan interrupted a lot that.  But not cello.  There has been little to do this, even these past few months haven't really done it but they have suggested it.

I could be looking at completely different careers right now, but nothing else has seemed appealing and I haven't really thought about it switching or going back to school for another career.  Teaching seems magical to me, something I want to be able to do really well.  And playing is a lot of fun when it is on my own terms.  As I go through this time in New York, I hope to get closer and closer to this balance.