Sometimes I get to thinking about how little I have done with my life. This only happens when I go to a concert. Every time I go to someone else's concert, I always think to myself that the music would be better if I were making it. This is probably egotistical, but I can't help it. I really like the way I make music better than the way most other people make music.

I teach music lessons for a living. It's very unimpressive, but very meaningful. I love it.

The only problem I have with teaching music lessons for a living, is that you don't really have to be any good at playing to teach music lessons. I know this for two reasons.

1) I know plenty of people who teach music lessons near where I live who are completely without talent or skill.
2) I have allowed my own skills to slide considerably since devoting myself to teaching, and I'm not one bit less effective because of this.

The real trouble is that I feel like I have wasted something. I was a good musician, or at least on my way to becoming one. I played several different instruments with facilityl, I had a well-developed spinto singing voice, and I really feel like I could have done something with a performance career. I guess I still have the singing voice, but I never use it anymore. And my instrumental skills are wasting away by the minute. It makes me feel extremely stopped-up.

One time my cello teacher told me that I was her "greatest hope." I suppose I am sorry to have been disappointing.

I'm happy with what I do. I just don't know if I am happy with who I am- being the small-town music teacher when I could have been the performer.

On a daily basis, I speak to my students in their lessons, and I think I am really telling them something of importance. I couldn't give it up, but I think it may have robbed me of my voice.

Baby

I just had this baby. It was about 2 months ago. I haven't noticed yet.

I keep waking up in the middle of the night and there is this small source of noise in a crib near my bed. And it is making noise, because that is what it does. So I get up and go to nurse the baby, and every single time, I look at him and get really confused about where he came from and why he is in my house.

This doesn't happen as much when it is not the middle of the night.

I like the baby. I feel very attached to the baby. I am just having a lot of trouble thinking of the baby as a person. He does NOT act like a person. He has no skills. I guess in my mind, you need to have skills to be a person. Like, talking skills, and eating skills, and the kinds of skills where you are able to hold your own head in one place or sit up without falling over. It's cute when he falls over, but definitely not very skillful.

Meeting my new baby has confirmed my suspected atheism. He is far too clumsy and mechanical to have been created by a supreme being. I think that God could have done better.

All that said, he is a rather nice baby, and I expect he will eventually become more person-like.

For now, when it is not 2 in the morning, I am very glad to have him.