It is said that the essential ingredients for happiness are: someone to love, something to do and something to look forward to.
How lucky am I? I have all three, in generous quantities.
I have some very exciting plans for the rest of this year - travel, entertainment and artistic projects.
But two weeks after the close of the Festival, I have been having a lot of trouble settling back into normal life. I've been so used to operating in overdrive that ordinary days now seem a bit dull. I'm still looking for entertainments; feeling impatient for the next exciting thing.
But life is not constant excitement. How do you make the most of the time between the exciting bits? It is so wasteful to wish it away. How can you quieten your mind and settle down to do the more boring things in between and still enjoy those days?
I should savour the pleasure of not living out of a suitcase, the freedom to cook whatever I like in my own kitchen (sprawling on the couch to eat it) and not having scary deadlines to meet.
And I should be making use of the time. I'm increasingly conscious of squandering the time available to me - mornings when I linger over the newspaper; days when I don't practise my singing; evenings when I sit and watch whatever is on television instead of working on my plans.
The improvements from the latest round of vocal training have settled in, and I wish I'd had this improved technique for the show in February. I find I need the imperative (and the terror) of an impending show to motivate myself to practise hard, and the effects of that work continue to build for a while.
A young person with decades of working life ahead can afford to waste a bit of time - but I don't have that luxury. At my age, years pass quickly, and I have to keep moving if I am going to to manage to do all the things I want to achieve.
How lucky am I? I have all three, in generous quantities.
I have some very exciting plans for the rest of this year - travel, entertainment and artistic projects.
But two weeks after the close of the Festival, I have been having a lot of trouble settling back into normal life. I've been so used to operating in overdrive that ordinary days now seem a bit dull. I'm still looking for entertainments; feeling impatient for the next exciting thing.
But life is not constant excitement. How do you make the most of the time between the exciting bits? It is so wasteful to wish it away. How can you quieten your mind and settle down to do the more boring things in between and still enjoy those days?
I should savour the pleasure of not living out of a suitcase, the freedom to cook whatever I like in my own kitchen (sprawling on the couch to eat it) and not having scary deadlines to meet.
And I should be making use of the time. I'm increasingly conscious of squandering the time available to me - mornings when I linger over the newspaper; days when I don't practise my singing; evenings when I sit and watch whatever is on television instead of working on my plans.
The improvements from the latest round of vocal training have settled in, and I wish I'd had this improved technique for the show in February. I find I need the imperative (and the terror) of an impending show to motivate myself to practise hard, and the effects of that work continue to build for a while.
A young person with decades of working life ahead can afford to waste a bit of time - but I don't have that luxury. At my age, years pass quickly, and I have to keep moving if I am going to to manage to do all the things I want to achieve.
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