A Day in the Life

Well, I woke up, fell out of bed, but didn’t drag a comb across my head, having no hair on top.  But for a 70-year old “retired” guy, it was quite a day and there’s no reason to document it here other than to remind myself (if I ever have the interest and the capacity to read through all these blogposts again years later) that that I once lived an active life that brought me a great deal of pleasure, but also was relentless hard work. And so today, before it turned noon, I buckled myself in at the computer and checked off my list:

 

1) Sent off my notes from last night’s Jazz, Joy & Justice class.

2) Convinced an Orff dealer who didn’t have my nine Pentatonic Press books in his 

      catalogue to carry them and sent him the order information.

3) Updated the SF Orff Course Website to announce next summer’s classes.

4) Confirmed with Dominican University that the course numbers and prices for credit for 

       the above were correct.

5) Joined Docu-sign and signed my contract with Austin Macauley  to publish 

       my Jazz, Joy & Justice book.

6) Sent the manuscript for the ninth Pentatonic Pressbook (4^thby another author) to the 

      lay-out person to begin getting it ready to print. 

7) Bought flight tickets to Portland to visit the grandkids in November.

8) Checked in with my host of the 4-day workshop I’ll be teaching in Oklahoma starting 

     tomorrow.

9) Began negotiating a future concert with my band in the Carmel Valley. 

Around noon, I unbuckled from the computer, had lunch and took a walk with my wife in San Francisco and returned 8.5 miles later. Now dinner, then packing.    

None of this is worthy of excessive pride, it’s more like a description of the farm I’ve created. No farmer brags about feeding the chickens, stacking the hay, milking the cow, and then going out to tend the fields or mend the fence. He or she is simply caretaking the land and doing the necessary chores to keep it going. She doesn’t need to track her miles on her phone ap like us city dwellers or make a special point to get out into the fresh air. He doesn’t need to make a list of which chickens he fed or cows he milked—or if he does, doesn’t pat himself on the back for checking them off. 

 

So my life isn’t so different, except that my cows and chickens are words on a screen or musical notes in the air or photos on a Website to entice people to do the real farm work in the active, live workshop. My fellow farmers are folks far away who all have the specialty of graphics or lay-out or proofreading or concert scheduling or printing paper books or distributing such books and so on. Somehow these interwoven activities produce a life-sustaining milk and eggs that hatch into future sustenance. 

 

So at the end of this “day in the life,” I can simply sing the song that sums it up:

 

“Who fed the chickens? (I did!)

Who stacked the hay? (I did!)

Who milked the cow? (I did!)

On this fine day. 

 

PS And don’t forget that the above song is featured on my CD Boom Chick a Boom: Doug Goodkin & the Pentatonics, available for sale at CD Baby or i-Tunes. (Don’t forget the farmer also has to sell the produce!)