The Planning and the Living

What’s wrong with this picture? Here I am with a free morning in Rio de Janeiro and instead of enjoying a coffee at the Girl From Ipanema café and walking on the beach, I’m in this little apartment working on my computer, trying to catch up with the business side of being an adult human. 

 

Having spent and continuing to spend so many days playing like a child in music classes and workshops, it’s easy to get spoiled and think that life should be a constant carnival of fun and games. But none of this happens without the boring bits of organizing the courses and classes, booking the flights, filling out the Visa forms, figuring out the payment procedures, gathering and sending the notes and yet more. 

 

It’s satisfying to write the books that carry the work further, but when you’ve created your own publishing company, there is a maddening amount of inventory, invoices, arranging mailings, communicating with distribution centers and dealers, paying royalties to other authors and yet more. Like writing the books! Then come the editors, graphic designers, lay-out people, printers, etc. 

 

Then all the summer course work checking in on registration, communicating with the faculty team, the site organizer, filling out the paperwork for the national Orff Association. And of course, updating the Website, advertising the courses/ workshops/ concerts/ books/ podcast on social media or through my personal mailing list. A few hours of actually living the work in the workshop, course or concert, only made possible by the endless hours preparing for it and following through to complete it. It can be maddening (especially the Visa forms!) and exhausting. 

 

But hey, it comes with the territory. It is a kind of proving ground for how much you care about the work, how much boring details you’re willing to sit with to get to the joy. I got as far as I could go with the Hong Kong Visa and then treated myself to finishing my book lying in a hammock on the porch of my Rio apartment. There’s something about a hammock that says, “Relax! You’ve earned it!”

 

And so I will. At least until the timer rings to tell me to finish my packing and head off to the airport.