A Day In The Life: 3/12/16

I sleep long enough, but wake up tired and headache-y. One of those days when my body feels...off. There have been too many of those this fall. My body is getting slammed with one malaise after another; a disadvantage of working with children. 
I've set myself a goal this month: run 30 minutes a day, every day. Even Christmas. It's Day Three, and I want to bury myself in blankets and pretend it's still dark, but my back is too sore to stay in bed anyway, so up I get. At least it's not raining, for a change. 
I decide to run south, which means that the outward-bound part will be hard (all uphill), but the return will be easy. I decide to sweeten the pill by ending the run at my favourite coffee bar/breakfast joint, Matchstick, where the poached-eggs-on-toast are just perfect. 
I simply cannot get up any speed this morning; my legs feel leaden but I keep running anyway, and at least I am warm. Up to 28th, across to Fraser, back down to Kingsway, with a little detour to add time. Finally my timer pings and I gratefully slow to a walk. 
Eggs, toast, black tea. Expensive, and I don't care. 
Walk to work, because I need to use their computers to write the music for a documentary I am scoring for a friend.  A detour to the mall because he needs a bit more time to edit the film. Buy some fuzzy pants at Ardene because they have foxes on them. Buy some slippers because everyone needs more warm slippers this time of year. Get to work- can't get in because the front door is locked. Seethe with frustration because my damn cel phone can't get a signal within a 2-block radius of work, for some reason. Finally manage to contact my angel boss, who is in the neighbourhood and lets me in, bless her. 
Wait some more. Fiddle with the music. Put on the new slippers. Get the new cut. Talk to the filmmaker; suggest changes. Wait for another cut. Make tea, raid the cupboard in the office for the cookies we serve to the ukulele students. 
Edit music, slide around tracks until they time up with the new cut (the actual composing was done last Tuesday). Talk it over with the filmmaker; change some stuff, send it off again. Suggest changes to the grammar in the subtitles, because I am as passionate about good english as I am about good music. 

Still life with fox mug and Garageband. Yes, I scored a film on Garageband. Suck it, music tech snobs. 

Five hours after I arrive at work, I am done. 
Stop in at a local clothing shop and spend more money. Leggings, big sweater. Basically the same clothes I was wearing in 1993. Everything old is new again. Hungry again- the local pizza joint is calling my name so I give in. Cocktail, delicious thin-crust pizza with leftovers for tomorrow. 

Get in my mouth, pizza with arugula & gorgonzola. I ran today- I can eat whatever I want. 

Home to my room. Saturday night, and I'm wearing the fuzzy fox pants and folding laundry. Love is out of town and the Christmas parties don't start until next weekend, that's my excuse. Put off prepping for work tomorrow teaching the preschoolers from hell. Put off prepping. Put off- Dammit. Time to prep. 

And yet, I'm still not prepping. Fox pants, BTW- are you sensing a theme here? 

Body still feels tired and- wrong, somehow. Like it did all day. Anger, frustration, just a little too close to the surface. Some days are just like that. Be thankful that there was no one around to unleash that frustration on. Be grateful that you got to make some art in a quiet room wearing new slippers. Some days, that's the absolute best thing you can do.

Six Things

• Yesterday, I was racked with self-doubt in the morning. So easy to see the causes in retrospect- and even at the time I knew why- even as tears rolled down my face in frustration. I was exhausted: I'd run a 10k race the day before (more on that later); I hadn't slept well, and I'd found out late in the evening that I had to substitute-teach a class that I had almost no preparation for. And yet?  Somehow all was a resounding success. My assistant and I gathered a bunch of theatre games (I knew more than I'd thought) and had a rousingly good time with the class. Even better? My own preschool class of 4 to 6 year-olds finally just... clicked. I found the right balance between fun and discipline; even the class troublemakers behaved swimmingly. It was the first time I'd enjoyed that class in the 6 weeks I've been teaching it, and I can see a glimmer of more good times to come. As I venture further into the world of music teaching I have so many moments of self-doubt, but flashes of fun are starting to appear more frequently as well (not to mention alliteration, apparently). Some things are all the more precious because you've had to work hard for them, and teaching is like that for me. 

• This guy. 

While I sobbed tears of tiredness and insecurity in his bathroom yesterday, this one got up, found a Car2Go close by, and drove me to work so I wouldn't have to haul my heavy bags around in the rain. Then he picked me up at the end of the day and delighted in my teaching triumphs with me. It's been two years since I met this motorbiking dude in a coffee shop and fell madly in love. Days like this remind me why. Petty much every day reminds me why, actually. I am very, very lucky. 

• I continue to be really busy, which is alternately fun and frustrating. I'm not working all that many hours, but by the time I factor in my psychology class (which I love), studying, prepping for my classes, especially the preschool music classes which are brand new to me this year, and traveling between all the different jobs and rehearsals and band practices... It's a lot. In case I'd forgotten, all this is reminding me that I really, REALLY prefer to be working hard at one thing (ie. rehearsing for a play) than trying to do a lot of things. However, there is a stubborn, masochistic part of me that finds it very hard to say "no" to things, because it knows that nine times out of ten I'll be really, REALLY glad I said "yes" to them. These parts of me are always battling it out. I'm learning to roll with it better. Except for the days when I end up sobbing in the bathroom. But they are few and far between. 

• I ran another race! That's two in just over a month now. Sept 11th was a 14km run, my longest distance ever. I'd been training pretty regularly for that one though. Saturday was a 10k, but I've been pretty inactive since work and school got going, and I also have a cold, so I wasn't feeling all that great about my chances of being fast. 

  

  Some of the colourful crowd about to run the Rock 'n Roll 10k

  However... The Rock 'n Roll Marathon Series was coming to Vancouver with a 1/2 marathon and a 10k. I didn't fancy my chances quite yet in a half, but I thought I could still manage a 10k. On a chilly, grey morning, I took my place with over 3000 other runners and took off around Stanley Park. Thankfully, my competitive spirit kicked in, even though I was congested, thanks in large part to the 55-minute pace bunny who I grimly followed, determined to come in under 60 minutes. And I did, finishing at exactly 58 minutes, or 782nd out of 3080 runners. I am very proud. And also motivated to run again, which was exactly why I signed up for the damn thing in the first place. 

  

  Medal! 

• Although the weather outside is frightful currently making a liar out of me by raining,  this has been quite a gorgeous season so far, which makes me even sadder that this is the first October in recent (and distant) memory that I haven't been singin' it up at the Pumpkin Patch. But unfortunately, I don't actually have ANY totally free days during my week. Even Saturdays (my one true day off) have been filled with random things. I miss my yearly outdoor gig very much, but it would have been crazy to try and shoehorn it in this year. 
  

It does seem a pity to be indoors so much though, when the weather has been amazing and the leaves have been more beautiful than I can ever remember them being. Next month will be about finding more time for yoga and exercise, to balance out all the sitting I am doing. 

• I bought a new instrument! Since I am playing a lot of ukulele this year (one of my new teaching gigs this year is assisting with 3 adult ukulele classes), and also playing a lot of bass (both in these classes and in a new band), I decided to combine these things and buy... a Uke Bass! It's small, can be played both acoustically and electrically, and its small frets are friendly to my inexperienced fingers. One of the best parts about teaching is that it's gotten me playing, listening to, and experiencing all kinds of music again. 

In about a month and a half I will get to come up for air for a few weeks in time for Christmas. See you back here again before that (I hope).