Eileen and I ran into a young woman we know in the grocery store. She sang in one of my children’s choirs years ago. Now she is a dolphin expert and lives in the Florida Keys. She also sings in a band there. She was with her Mom and mentioned that she had been visiting Holland since January. It was pleasant to see her.

I was musing later on how her work in a bar band was so foreign to so many classical/academic musicians who are in my orbit these days.  Whereas I feel comfortable talking bar music with a bar musician and classical/academic music with a classical/academic musician.

This is helpful to remember as I am snubbed by locals (not you, Rhonda! if you’re reading this… you are a big exception to this).

One of my insights from having been on vacation for a bit is to regain some perspective about this stuff.

It bugs me that I have sometimes have to struggle with feeling sorry for myself about being snubbed and ignored.  I certainly do not want to feel sorry for myself. And by the time it gets to that stage I have lost perspective.

Mainly I have forgotten that my musical world is different from those who look askance at me (if they see me at all).  In actuality my entire point of view about life is far removed from most people I encounter. This has actually always been so. And I treasure my own little take on life. That’s the vacation insight.

Although I enjoy my work at church and at the dance department, my true calling is to be inside music and ideas and beauty. Insofar as that overlaps with my livelihood I know that I am lucky. But when circumstances are uncomfortable I need to remember why I am doing what I do. Whether things are going well in my church work or in the dance studio is only important to me in terms of doing a good job. My passion is music and learning. That can exist as long as I can think and move.

I know how lucky this is.

I do find myself pondering whether there are other locals who are at all interested in the same things I am. But I think of this mostly when I consider the important mental hygiene of not being entirely isolated. So I continue to want to stay open when someone like Rhonda or another musician/thinker crosses my path.

In my life I have had many good friends. But most of them have fallen out of my orbit or changed.  Since usually they don’t make a declaration of why things are changing, I have to consider how much of my isolation from them is my own doing or is the result of having upset or failed them somehow. Since I don’t have the information it’s tempting to blame myself entirely, but intellectually I know that’s quite true.

And in the final analysis, I am very very very lucky. First of all to have someone who loves me like Eileen. Secondly to spend so much of my time connecting to great music and great ideas and great beauty.

The last few mornings when I have opened my front door I have not only seen and heard the beautiful sights of a summer morning still dim before the sun entirely rises. I have also smelled the strong lovely scent of the plants/flowers Eileen has planted in our front lawn. I am lucky in many ways.