...and the Livin' Is Easy

As of a little after 7:30 this evening, I am officially in summer mode. (If you want to be technical, it really happened as of about 2:30 this afternoon, since the music store students whom I taught tonight go year-round, so they don't really figure into the semester equation at all.) Forget what the calendar might say; those of us who work in education operate by the academic calendar, so when the spring semester ends, summer it is.

It's been a good year for teaching in terms of being musically rewarding and all that; my students improved over the course of the year--some of them dramatically--and there was hardly a slug in the bunch. With the exception of one morning, there wasn't really a bad travel day (and even that one morning still gave me sufficient time to get where I needed to go; the trip itself was just long), and I wasn't stuck with a fifteen-minute lunch break at 10:15 in the morning like I was a number of years ago. The scheduling thing is pretty much down to a science; the days themselves are pretty long, but I've been successful in not punishing myself too much beyond the length of the day itself.

One thing that I never truly got down this year was the whole business of sleep. A few years ago, I was pretty good at getting to bed by eleven and waking up on the first alarm of the second clock, which was around (artificially early) six (I set the clocks in my room fifteen minutes ahead for the psychological effect). This year, I was lucky to make it by midnight on any night during the year; between getting home pretty late most nights, having a bunch of friends on AIM who stayed up later than I did, and simply needing to get my "office stuff" done, I just never could force myself to bed on time, which resulted in beaucoups of snooze alarms being hit the next morning. My goal, once summer teaching begins in a few weeks, is to not stay up any later than now while reaping the benefits of the 7:30 summer wake-up (my first lesson never starts before nine over the summer, and, since everything's taught at the home studio, it's a wonderful fifteen-step commute from my room to this one). And I really need to regain that night/morning discipline in the fall.

I'm also looking forward to getting a lot done musically this summer. Teaching as many people as I do often, by its very nature, gets in the way of the things I need to do for my own playing. I'm looking to take advantage of having a horn out all the time and being in this room most of the day by getting a lot of practicing and transcribing done, as well as playing stuff just for fun. And the sleeping giant known as TD/D is about to rise again.

I'm going to be really lazy in terms of sleep tonight/tomorrow morning, and after that, I'm going to get a lot done this week.

Oh, and one more thing: Go Mavs!

Throwing more caps into the air: Happy graduation to my friend and fellow jazzblogger Shawn. Just like Colin yesterday (who is Shawn's future roomie, incidentally), my alma mater now awaits him as well. (I also realized that I have yet to give shout-outs to those in my teaching studio who graduated last week; that'll come soon. The earlier-than-usual ceremonies, combined with last week's busy-ness, just caught me by surprise blog-wise.)