mayhem and gratitude

I slowly slip in to a bizarre realm of workaholism, so contradictory to my personality. In the span of two weeks, in addition to my regular teaching duties, I presented two workshops at a conference. I have been coaching Forensics, which is soon drawing to a close with our tournament in Cairo next weekend. I also had a band concert plus organized two concert events during our school's International Week. I run a jazz band practice on Wednesdays (virtual Friday) after school with students plus rehearse with the adult band on Sunday evenings. We have a performance again today- we had one last Friday, too. And I teach yoga on Saturdays in my apartment. Oy. I am pretty sure I am losing my mind.

The good news is, the band concert is over and went relatively well. The trip to Cairo will be exhausting but it is always nice to get out of Kuwait for a few days. The music workshop I presented was approved by admin at my school to be presented at a larger conference. This does not mean it will be selected by the conference committee, but it is still nice to be noticed. The yoga workshop I presented at the conference went well and I received thanks and compliments and that is all it takes to make me happy.

I celebrated American Thanksgiving with colleagues last evening. It was nice and I have developed some strong friendships in Kuwait. It is unfortunate I do not agree with any philosophies of our new superintendent and feel I must leave in order to preserve any amount sanity I have left. We shall see. The aformentioned busy-ness has not been conducive to a clear thought process.

That said, as I was playing guitar with my students last week, I noted how grateful I was to work as I do. We were sitting out in the sun playing guitar, as it was warmer outside than in the chilly classroom, and I thought, "I am the luckiest person in the world. My job involves sitting around with amazing kids, teaching them chord progressions, and introducing them to the finer points of folk music."

Life is good.