The day job

For a student, the moment of infinite freedom is the moment you hand in your last final. For the teacher, it's the moment you turn in your grade sheets to the registrar. I handed them in today! My UW teaching wrapped up at last. This has been a beast of a job... pretty much 70-hour workweeks nonstop, seven day weeks, no rest. I took 1 weekend off sometime in May, but that was about it.

I've had some playing time - trips to Portland, and teaching for VamoLa, and jamming with the Saturday group, but it's been grueling. VamoLa and the Saturday group both cause a certain amount of stress, since I'm in a leader position for those; and the Lions always involve a long journey. So it's always, race home from a draining day and straight to a rehearsal or a long road trip, tired and edgey. Very little down time, and, the worst problem has been: no time for my own practice! My caixa playing is sliding; and I really want to work on repinique, and Chris Stromquist's conga stuff, and timbal; and Ramiro's samba-reggae stuff.... and my pandeiro-spring plan only lasted 1 month. I've had to table pandeiro again. The reality of the working life.

And frustratingly, my new job in Portland is going to prevent me from going to Brazil camp. :(

The grind of the teaching job has been so relentless that I felt music fading away a bit, in a disturbing way. Am I a biologist or a musician? It felt deeply disturbing to start saying "biologist" again instead of "musician." I can still picture the Mocidade quadra, so vividly, and remember being there, the thunder and awe and thrill of being in the middle of that 350-drummer bateria, and playing in the Monobloco and Banga parades; yet it seems so far away. At the end of the tiring days, recently, I've wondered if I will stop playing entirely someday, if music has been a side journey that will come to a natural end.

But this week, with the end of this teaching job, suddenly the music rose again back into view, like the blinders coming off. I booked my ticket to New York and London, for August - my one musical trip this summer. I felt ELATED when I bought my London ticket. Plus I have managed to squeeze in a trip to Maine too (for a big family get-together), a rare treat.

And yet I've really been loving teaching again, too. After I got over my first three weeks of total clumsiness learning how to speak English again, it started rolling. Somewhere in the middle of the quarter I hit a good stride and started really loving it again. I got GREAT feedback from my students on the last day of class when they turned in their last assignments. Lots of them lingered to tell me how much they'd enjoyed the class. So it felt like all the hard work was worthwhile. Maybe I will learn yet how to balance this double life.