Purging

It's been interesting with L here and going through stuff, trying to clean out ever more stuff. I seem to be the one in my family (both my current family and family of origin) that is the most interested in family history. So I have kept all kinds of letters, school projects (the flat kind). I just knew that my daughters would be so glad to have all those special items to remind them of their school days.

I guess not. After pulling out some postcards and a few other things, they declared that I could throw the rest of the paper items into the recycling. Bolstered by their actions, I became brave and looked through a box of their baby clothes, showed them to the girls, put them back in the box and added them to the Goodwill pile. 

The question is: if/when we move, would I take this with me? If the answer is no, then why am I hanging on to it now?

Karma?

In conversation recently, I heard the adage, "It happened for a reason." I have said that before. You know, when something bad happens, but something good comes along that might not have happened if that bad thing had not occurred. 

This implies that some force (God, karma, etc.) controls destiny. I know that many people believe that. It is hard for me to believe that the Divinity controls events on earth. Why would God allow all these terrible things to happen, or worse yet, make them happen? Even for a reason?

The idea that works for my mind is this: events happen, and if we seek whatever internal/external guidance that is available to us (e.g. listening to that voice, channeling the Divine, whatever way you want to think of it) we can move forward in whatever direction works.

That made me think of a quote. A quote from me. I have never written a quote before. Here it is:

"I don’t think that things happen for a reason. I think that we make reason out of things that happen."

Looking forward to Monday

It's the kind of weekend that makes me glad that I can start the work week again tomorrow. Not that it wasn't a fun weekend, but I'm really tired.

Saturday: 8 hours involved in a board meeting. 90 minutes driving to Palm Desert, 90 minutes driving home, the rest in a meeting. The meeting was fine, and lunch was included, and I enjoy the company of the people on the board, but that much driving and that much meeting in one day almost did me in.

More Saturday: Played in a concert. This always takes more energy than one would suppose. It appears as though we are sitting on stage for 90 minutes, and we are. But we are thinking, thinking, and concentrating very hard. Oh, and moving our arms around a lot.

Sunday: Choir rehearsal, church, repeat the concert. Cleaned parts of the house that needed it the most. Yes, Monday should bring a calmer order to my day.

The Unintentional Gatekeeper

You might be able to guess that I like to communicate with people. I like to talk. (Really, I love to talk. I'm just wired that way. Sorry if that's a problem. I don't mean it to be.) I write letters, send cards, mail the occasional package. Obviously, I blog. And, I email.

When email first became available, back in the day, I was right on it. First I had one account, then I somehow ended up with four or five. Now I've pared it down to two. Along the way I kept up with the technology, and it became easy for me to set up group email lists. I also understand the difference between reply and reply all, and I hope that I am very careful in using them correctly. There is also an important difference between reply and forward.  (I have been on the receiving end of a reply email meant to be forwarded and not meant for my eyes. That was interesting.... and yes, it is all sorted out now.)

Because I am quick to email, I became the de facto informant for several of the groups I'm involved with which shall remain nameless. I don't recall that I ever suggested that I be the actual leader of these groups, but I intended to act as a secretary.

Somewhere along the line, though, some people have assumed that I am the only one in the group who can send out a group email. Now, I hope it's not because they think I am the only official gatekeeper of information. I hope that it is because they have not figured out how to set up a group list or how to save one email with everyone's address and hit reply all.

I am here to say that I would like to liberate myself from the role of the only gatekeeper. First of all, this fall when I am off on sabbatical, I will set aside my secretarial duties for the year of all my groups. Second of all, if you would like everyone to know something, I do not need to be the filter. You can share the wealth. You can send out an email yourself. It's not really difficult to do.

Now, back to your regularly-themed posts.

On the End of Daylight Savings

Although I like the fact that California uses daylight savings (and now it's lighter in the morning, so it's easier to get up, and I like the longer evening daylight in the summers), I have come to realize that the shift of an hour one way or the other is not so simple for me anymore. I must now give myself a week to adjust to the time change. On Monday I found that by 4:30 I was starting to get hungry, and it took me a minute to realize why. Various friends have made comments about being tired, or being out of sorts, and I think it can be attributed to going off of Daylight Savings. 

So, if this is Friday, I should be about back to whatever normal is in a day or two.

One's Adult Children

I had the opportunity this weekend, once again, to watch one of my daughters in her adult life. This time I saw my younger daughter as one of the lead teachers, along with two of her very favorite own teachers, as they led over 100 dancers in their annual recital. I do not generally get to watch her with her students, although we talk about teaching quite a bit when we are together. This year I arrived early and watched her run through a few pieces with her dancers and enjoyed watching how she works with the girls, and how at home she is in her own skin. When she was two, I knew she would dance, but I could not picture her as a grown-up at that time. Now I am so happy to see who she has become!

Of National Poetry Month and Baseball

"Poets are like baseball pitchers. Both have their moments. The intervals are the tough things." 

- Robert Frost

Coming through the entire month of March offers its rewards for me, and I don't even live in a place where we get real winter. But after the short month of February and before the glorious greening of April, the long, long month of March stretches out.

And now it's April, and there is baseball to watch, baseball to listen to, and every team has a clean start. This is the next year for which we've waited.

April is also National Poetry Month, which often means little to the general public, but for the occasional NPR stories. 

In honor of baseball season and National Poetry Month, you can peruse this website which has complied baseball poems and songs.

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Day 3 - Clutter Cleanse: I found a little salt and pepper shaker combo that I don't even remember getting. Who needs more than one set? Donated.

Thoughts on Cell Phones

I am still holding out on getting a smart phone. I know I want one, but I also know that I can get by without one.

However, I am starting to get into the swing of things with texting. Last month I got a new phone with a little keyboard that looks like a Blackberry, so now I can text without being frustrated. In fact, I have been known to text more than once a week now! I can see the appeal of sending quick notes to people, mostly my family.

On Friday, while walking home, I dropped my phone on the ground and promptly broke it. I think it still calls and works, but the screen is blank, so it is basically useless. Not a big deal in terms of money - I just went online and ordered an identical phone for just $17 including shipping.

The bad news is that I have to recreate my entire contact list since I can't read the screen.

So, do I feel at a loss without my phone? Nope. I've spent the past 3 days without it and feel no twinge.  I will be glad to get my new phone up and running, though, when it does manage to appear.

On a side note, my cell phone carrier is Virgin Mobile, pay-as-you-go, and I am mostly happy with it. I have an old plan which charges $5/month as long as I top up every 90 days. I do that, especially since it  is automatic. (For this rate, phone calls are 18 cents a minute and texts are 15 cents. I am running a $50+ balance which shows how little I do use the phone.)

However, when I when online to see if I had any texts since my phone died, I noticed that I had some charges for "xtras" which came to 15 cents a day going back to January, when I got this new phone. After 15 minutes on the phone (still like my landline!) with Virgin Mobile, they said that it was a feature by which I could access games, etc. Huh? I never asked for that. She said she would take it off my account and credit me with $5. I think I got the short end of that stick, but it was not worth my time to add up all the little charges, so I let it go.

I might not have noticed that if not for my broken phone, so that is another reason that my glass is half-full.

A Declaration

In the past several weeks I have lost my cell phone (for a day), my iPod (for a day), my coffee cup (also for a day). In the past several months I have found myself sending last-minute emails that I had meant to send out a day or two earlier, prepping my music classes far too close to start time (thus preventing me from doing some of the things I wanted to because I needed additional time to get ready for that particular lesson). I have also neglected practicing my violin and viola, I have read fewer books, and I don't compose and arrange nearly as much music as I would like. When I do have some free time in the evenings, my thoughts are so fragmented that I end up just watching tv when I could be reading since my brain power seems to be diminished.

I am most comfortable with myself when I am organized, and lately I have felt pulled in too many directions.

So, I wrote down a list of things that I am involved in, and it looks something like this:

My Music Life
Teaching music (6 preps a week)
Teaching string classes (4 preps a week)
Teaching 5 private students (some prep)
Serving on the board of the ICCAOSA (sporadic prep which also includes creating newsletters)
Playing in the Claremont Concert Orchestra (two rehearsals a week, plus practicing)
Playing Celtic Music with my friend once a week (should be practicing that)
Occasional work with the Village Pipers recorder group
Composing and arranging music for various groups (would love to be doing more of this)

My Church Life
Co-organizing the Women's Choir
Music Committee (once a month as a liaison for the choir)
Organizing string chamber music
Once a month social group (which I host once a year)
Organizing annual Women's Retreat
Helped with Sunday School for 8 weeks

My other life
Two book clubs

Wow. That's a long list. To be fair, some of those items just require me to show up. I really enjoy everything on that list, but it is time to start shedding some of those things. This is a tough choice, and perhaps I will just take a sabbatical from some of them, and them come back to some as time and energy permit.

October Thoughts

I am posting this in hopes that I will remember to look back at it at the beginning of October next year (or even in September) to remind myself of a few things so I can make better choices for myself.

First of all, I should remember that our little bedside radio/alarm clock is programmed to be helpful and change the time for the daylight savings switches. However, it was programmed before the dates were moved to one week later in the fall and three weeks earlier in the spring. Yesterday morning, I crawled out of bed only to discover that it was already 8:00. Good thing it was Sunday, and I wasn't late for anything, but that was still very surprising since the bedside clock said 7:00. Oh, yeah. That preprogrammed thing.

More importantly, I should remember that during October when all my school-year activities are in full swing, I should learn to say no to some commitments, or at least put them off until January. Even if each activity only requires a few hours a week, I feel as though I am scrambling for what I am supposed to do and I am not fully prepared for whatever it is I am about to do. I look at my lesson plans just before I head off to school and realize that there was something I was supposed to do - a visual to prepare, a song to put on my iPod, something that I would normally have taken care of early.

I know that some people are great at this "just in time" preparedness, but the older I get, the more it unsettles me.

Also, October is one of the long months in the school year. It has 31 days and no special days off. March is the other long month. In November I can look forward to Veteran's Day as well as a week off at Thanksgiving, so soon I will have a chance to feel caught up.

Thanks for allowing me to indulge in a little self-reflection for this post. Tomorrow I should get back to regularly scheduled life.

The Circle of Life: Musings

This past week has presented a variety of opportunities for me to reflect on the circle of life, as the world spins on. Somethings are new, somethings pass away, somethings remain the same.

Yesterday the HMC community said our final good-bye to Joe Platt, the founding president of the school. Galileo Hall was filled with the HMC family and for two hours, people got up to speak about how special Joe and Jean have been to us all, in so many ways. Although we miss Joe very much, he lived a good, long life and it seems expected (though sad) that after 90-some years on this planet that his life has come to an end.

Unexpected death of people who should still be vibrant in their lives is much harder to take. On Friday we lost a friend to cancer. We last saw Steve in the middle of July, just over two months ago, and enjoyed spending the evening with him and his wife, Susan and other book club friends. Steve was not feeling up to speed that night, and he found out just 10 days after that dinner that he had colon cancer which had spread to his liver.

I did not find out about Steve's cancer until about 2 weeks ago, and I am especially heart-stricken over his death, not just because he was a friend and close to us in age (and that he leaves behind a wife and two sons in their 20s), but that his doctor had told him that he did not need to get a colonoscopy since there was no incidence of cancer in his family. So, his death may have been prevented, and the message here, folks, is that you need to get this life-saving screening done. Period.

Amid sad times, though, rise rays of joy and hope. On Friday, as Steve was leaving this earth, I had the chance to meet this little baby, 7 weeks old. Daisy is just as cute as she can be, wearing one of the tie-dyed garments we made at her baby shower at the beginning of July. Welcome to the world, baby Daisy!

Musings on Data

From the NY Times - Sunday, Sept 23, 2012

I will often read newspaper articles about the internet and social media, and yesterday's NY Times front page offered this article about how much electrical power "the cloud" takes. (As with many very long articles, I read until I feel I've gotten the main point and then my eyes glaze over...)

Anyway, as I read this article I thought about how genealogists search and search for any kind of data they can find on their ancestors. A birth, marriage or death certificate, census records, etc. We are fortunate if we can find some more personal information about the person, especially a diary, letters or even a memoir.

Future genealogists will have a much different problem. How will they sort through the mountains of data on each person? I think about all the data I have for myself. I have all the letters that my mom wrote to my grandma during the 1960s, the letters I wrote to my parents when I went to college and in the early years of my marriage before I started using email as well as the letters I wrote to H during those periods where we were apart. I also have saved so many emails. I have this blog. I have scrapbooks and the journals I kept in college. It goes on and on.

Do I think that people will actually care about this in the future? I like to think I will go back through all this old stuff, but really, I probably will look at less than 1% of it all. Maybe it's just comforting to me to know that I can look at my past self should I ever feel the need.

However, I may want to go through it and purge the most embarrassing stuff on the off chance that someone will one day actually go through it.....

Rainy Day Musings about Interconnectedness

It's a rainy day in Claremont.  That's good.  We need the rain, and it's been a dry winter so far.  Wednesdays are my very busy teaching days, and I usually have the car all day long.  We are fortunate to be a one-car family (couple), with one of us able to walk/bike to work.  (Yes, I bike sometimes, too when I don't have to be someplace immediately after class.)  Now that it is softball season, though, one of us needs the car on occasion during the day to go umpire a college game somewhere in the great IE basin.  Today was one such day.

I made a reservation for a Zipcar to tide me over for 2 hours.  With impending rain, however, we thought the game might be cancelled, but we didn't want to give up the Zipcar reservation just in case it wasn't.  I had the option of canceling the reservation without fees if I did so before 9:00 a.m.

The 3:00 game was cancelled at about 12:30 or so, and I already had the Zipcar at that point, so we did a little shuffling of getting a car here and a car there.  Of course, in retrospect, I didn't need the reservation.

My ramblings do have a central thought.  The powers that be at the University of LaVerne did not fully know that their decision to cancel a game had wider-reaching effects than imagined.  They know that they have to alert the visiting team and the umpires (and probably others), but they do not know that their decisions reach to the umpire spouses, as well.  If they had cancelled the game early this morning, it would have saved us a little bit of money and some time-juggling.

I know this is not a big issue, but it does have implications that our actions reach farther than we sometimes realize.

That is all.  Carry on.