Thursday, October 11, 2012

Dad

I originally intended this blog to be more focused on my experience as a father/musician/teacher, but it's quickly shifted all of its attention onto my daughter.  I guess that's a fair model of how life has been for the last five weeks, but it's still useful for me, and hopefully insightful for you, to take stock of my own goings-on:

I've barely even brought it up, but I did end up finding a new high school choral job, but it's part-time.  For now, that's working, because I can stay up until 2am on a weeknight and still be able to function when my work day is smaller...we'll see what happens long term.  I may have a post or two just about my school, because while it's a small job, it's an incredible place to teach, and I love what I get to do there.

I only work three days a week, and not full ones at that.  So when we talked about my career path for the fall, I wanted to maintain connections and involvement in the local music scene, keeping myself sharp, staying in others' minds to get gigs, etc.  So I have quite a lot going on, musically speaking:

  • Giving private voice lessons out of our house (looking for a couple more students if you know someone!)
  • singing with James River Singers, an auditioned chamber choir
  • forming a Richmond area a cappella group
  • finishing a Master's degree in Music Education
  • singing in the Faculty Lounge Lizards, a band made of my school's staff
  • playing music at my church
  • taking infrequent performing opportunities at local churches

My youngest student.






Has fatherhood changed me? Sure, but I don't think I know many of the ways yet.  I can say it's given me both a newfound capacity for love, and a greater awareness of my selfishness. Sometimes I can't make her calm and satisfied, and while she hopefully won't writhe and scream continuously about it when she's a teenager, that is probably a permanent limitation of fatherhood.  The good thing about it, especially now, is that it reminds me that I can't do this alone.  Tori and I are flawed, have limits to our patience, experience, and abilities, and we need to know that God loves Fiona, too, and ultimately will provide for her needs, whether through us or not.  So that's cool.


I'm also a lot less emotionally stable.  I attribute at least part of this to our weird sleep patterns.  I've cried watching a movie, and even a movie trailer.  Fairly mundane setbacks will send me into about 30 minutes of utter despair before I realize that life has, in fact, gone on.  Basically, I'm either on top of the world, or life is not worth living, most of the time, and usually several of each in a given day.

This trailer gets me every time...it's been my favorite book since 7th grade, can't wait to see the new film version!



This post took 3 days to write, because you can't do anything with a baby.  More on that in my next one, should it ever get written.

No comments:

Post a Comment