Oh hey.

Oh hey.  Remember me?  Yeah, I know.  I blinked and all of the sudden it’s July.  What happened?

Well, I’ve been super busy (obviously).  Between juggling work life and home life, there’s not much left over.  In fact, I’ve had to sacrifice clarinet practice a little, just to keep a good balance.  I wish it didn’t have to be that way!

I’ve definitely been in survival mode when it comes to my clarinet practice.  I’m lucky if I even get past my fundamentals.  It sucks, because I want to so much more than just keep my head above water!  I haven’t even come close to achieving the goals that I had put forth in my last post.  It drives me crazy, but the best I can do right now is maintain, and I have to be OK with that.

In early May, I got the opportunity to go to Queensland, Australia with my quintet.  What a great trip!  We spent a week doing military ceremonies, school clinics, and recitals.  This is what I joined the Navy to do!

I also had an awesome opportunity to play the Artie Shaw Concerto again, this time in an indoor setting!  It was programmed into the Joint Forces Concert this year.  Here’s an amazing video that my student’s father took and posted of the performance:

I’m pretty happy with my performance, although I almost had a music malfunction…haha.  The page turns are crazy, and I had to tape part of one page onto another and it was pretty much literally hanging by a thread.  Luckily it didn’t fall off until after I passed that part.  Also, luckily everyone loved my performance.  It’s definitely a crowd pleaser!

So I guess my goal for the rest of the year is to just keep swimming with my head above water.  I can’t even think about taking any auditions right now!  I hardly have time to practice my work stuff.  I suppose that’s ok for now.