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Whew!

I’ve spent the past four months student teaching out in the burbs of Chicago, just wrapping that whole process up this past Friday. Now, I’ve always been a busy guy ever since I started this blog in 2005, and I’ve always managed to keep writing, podcasting, putting out news, and keeping the community news rolling across the front page while balancing my various activities. Since starting up my student teaching (and particularly the last eight weeks of high school teaching) I have had to bury my head in the sand and just focus on that.

I kept up my gigging and taught about 25 private bass students while student teaching, a financial necessity for me but not a course of action that I’d recommend for other future student teachers. Spending all day (and many nights at the high school) at school (which, as a student teacher, is really kind of an “un-job”–you put in 40 hours or more put end up paying $800 a week!), then going off the the even more distant suburbs to play or teach until 10 pm, and also spending your weekends teaching all day and night, while doing score study, practicing conducting, doing lesson plans, and all the other countless tasks you need to do as a classroom music teacher leaves absolutely no time whatsoever for anything, let alone blogging!

This is, in fact, the first time I have written anything since starting the high school teaching (gotta love WordPress future posting!). In fact, this is the first time since the summer that I have sat down at my MacBook, with no one around, poured a nice, steaming cup of coffee, and simply taken some time to write.

It’s a nice feeling!

A Return to Sanity

I have had a blast being in the schools these past four months. I actually got to conduct four movements from Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition last week (!), which was a tall order for a rookie conductor (imagine 100 pairs of high school eyeballs looking back at you…trying to find ways to mess with you!) and an amazing experience. I really enjoy this kind of work, and I’m looking forward to seeing what;s out there for me next fall.

I’m extremely grateful to Jeff Weisner, Pete Tambroni, and Phillip Serna for continuing to post during my absence. Getting a mix of writing styles and opinions is such a good thing for a blog, and I think that having all of us writing here makes it a more valuable (and hopefully entertaining–that’s part of why I do this, after all) resource and destination for folks out there.

I’ll be getting back into the blogging saddle, though probably not with the same intensity with which I operated in 2006 and 2007. For me, it’s all about finding a good balance, somewhere between the maximum overdrive blogging I did a few years ago and my virtual absence these past several months. I’m confident that there’s a balance in there somewhere that keeps this fun and entertaining for me (and hopefully for you) while not getting overwhelming.

For now, I have several hundred emails, links, videos, photos, story ideas, and events that have piled up in my “to blog” folder, so I’ll be sifting through these for some new post content over the next week. Expect to see more of me (I’d like to do a little more video content–we’ll see…) here on the blog, and even though I may be slow to respond/post, please continue to send me your ideas, events, and the like!

I know it sounds cheesy, but this isn’t my blog.

It’s our blog! 😉

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