Indian Summer Blues

I've been acquainting myself with a collection of solo piano tunes called Indian Summer by jazz legend Dave Brubeck.  Of course, I made it through another working summer seeking enrichment and renewal in many ways.  But in the end, the seemingly endless parade of concerns concurrent with my job take their toll, and I resolved to spend the last two weeks of summer vacation keeping an intentional distance from work, a kind of Indian summer in itself.  And Brubeck helped. 

Summer school's a pretty relaxed and straightforward enough gig, though not entirely conducive to a sense of real "staycation," especially in light of all the fun and trip-taking so many close family and friends seemed to have enjoyed.  I had plenty of fun myself, for sure: saw my lady quite a bit, swam and barbecued, read and wrote, and otherwise tried taking it easy as often as I could afford to.  But here's hoping this was my last summer spent teaching.  Altogether it really wasn't so bad; the kids were great, and all went fairly smooth-like, everything considered.  At the same time, I'm naturally anxious to have a bit more balance,
a life that doesn't revolve around unceasing professional pressures.

Like I've told myself, and as many friends and co-workers have urged over the years, you need a break, a Sabbath, to commune with the Almighty, to balance your perspective and maintain good judgment by tending to your own wellness, without which the mind is inevitably a slave to urgency.  In the end, life's got to be lived dynamically.  You can be too active.  Or too inactive.  Or be too much alone.  Or too much in company.  All of these skew perspective in a way that may congest the flow of wisdom and poison one's temperament.  Put another way, the foolish, cranky, impatient self is often the child of a lopsided life.

Professional endeavors ought to be faced in concert with personal ones, beginning with a fixed spiritual heading, then with physical keeping, and lastly with enrichment (whether social, emotional, or intellectual).  Of course, in the best of all worlds, these are multifaceted pursuits that continually coincide.  But you can't rely exclusively on work to even out the scales of wellness.  Equilibrium should be an intention, or it's at least possible, maybe likely, that other areas, maybe all, will suffer.  If my life or any of the gifts and potential in my custody have suffered, here's to better days.

Play it again, Dave.