Three-Ring Circus

For most of my life, I’ve been a juggler, trying to keep the balls or clubs or fire sticks of teaching kids, giving workshops for adults, arranging workshops for adults, writing, my own musical life, family life and more up in the air without crashing on my head. It was an ongoing Three-Ring Circus! 

 

But with retirement, the tent came down, the elephants in the room went back to their proper cages and there was the leisure to sit under a tree and chew on a grass stalk while contemplating the next step in the tour. Until this week. 

 

Suddenly, it was back in the Big Top! Finishing my 5-day Toronto online class, helping get my daughter off to Europe, preparing to host three guests coming for two days and then giving them the Doug Tour of SF, packing for the live Orff course down in the Carmel Valley and preparing for my birthday party next week—the show was on! A few more balls got thrown into the air— the emergency meetings about the student from abroad who was about to arrive with the wrong non-CDC-approved vaccine (we held firm to our promise not to let her in, but it broke all our hearts), the question about which instruments/ supplies we can pick up from school and so on. 

 

It struck me that I rarely had to juggle so much with deadlines and time pressures during the last 18 months and like the return of rush-hour traffic, one of the less attractive sides of post-pandemic life. But just as I can choose whether it’s worth it to get on the freeway, whether I need that trip or not or should consider biking or walking, so is it my choice whether to teach this class or that. I’m scheduled to present at a Conference in Australia in January and they’re still unclear whether it will work for me amidst Covid restrictions. If it has to be online, the thought of avoiding 24-hour plane travel and arranging other courses while I’m there to justify the time is somewhat attractive. 

 

Okay, my guest have awakened, I have to pack and then take them on Part II of the Doug Tour. The circus is back in town!