Sometimes Enough is Good Enough – Thoughts on the New Year

I have a confession to make. Sometimes I am a slacker. No really. My husband can tell you first hand. Today, on this last day of 2016, I slept till 11 am. This is the latest I’ve ever slept since I was in high school and I had mono. On my vacation I can Facebook (a new verb my husband and I use) for a good hour. I get nothing done.

But others who know me, coworkers, friends and the rest of my family, know me as an overachiever; a workaholic. I put on a musical with teens with special needs every year, and direct a drum line and chorus, give piano and guitar lessons after school, and help with the recording studio. I’ve always equated stress or feelings of failure with any of these conquests as, maybe I’m not good enough or maybe there’s something I don’t know that would make this easier. So maybe I should learn more!

So I went back to school and got my masters. The classes were great, don’t get me wrong, and filled with oodles of great ideas of what more can I do to benefit my teaching. Sometimes I would feel better about myself when the professor would teach about something I already do. Pat on the back for me, I already figured that out! But more often than not, the new ideas were overwhelming reminders of what I was lacking, or what I needed to add to my already heaping plate of stuff to do.

When someone starts a new diet the ending result is usually “What? I have to eliminate all of this? And eat all of that instead?” This is too much of a change! Loss of hope sets in and ultimately failure and an “I suck” thought process. Eliminate one small thing and add one new thing to get used to it first! I thought by doing only one class a semester that I would have the head space to absorb all the new material slowly and more fully. Who knows, maybe I did? Still, the tradeoff was added stress.

So what is my resolution this year? I am not going to take any more grad classes for one. People, I’m asking you to hold me to this. Yes, I even took another grad class after I received my masters degree. It was the “Ooo, this looks interesting! I want to learn all the stuff in the world!” impulse. I need time for reflection, to digest all the material I learned in the past six years, to assess what I need to know going forward.

This lyric video of The Byrds “Turn! Turn! Turn!” is an awesome reminder that, hey, you don’t always need to be happy, or thin, or doing, or succeeding, or in love, or learning, or working. Sometimes you need to do just the opposite! You need to break down in order to rebuild. What part of your life do you need to lose control of and just let happen?

Let the creative juices flow! Sometimes it’s okay to be “good enough”. Be still. I’m not preaching to you; think of this as more of a self rant that I will look at throughout the year when I start to overwhelm myself again. Like, next week. Hopefully you will feel my self rant helpful too. If not, carry on!

I will end with one last video by Frou Frou “Let Go” and the lyrics go:

“So let go

And jump in

Oh well whatcha waiting for

It’s all right

‘Cause there’s beauty in the breakdown”

Happy New Year!

For DTS Recording Studio, signing off for now,

Julie