The first day-off of the season

(Originally posted on June 29, 2010)

What season, you ask?  It’s the festival season.  I’m here in southern Vermont, working for the Marlboro Music Festival as a music librarian.  This is my 12th summer working for the festival, and my 7th summer as a full-season staffer.  Even while I was in Japan studying Bach, I worked on the festival’s scheduling database…  I can say I maintain a good relationship with the organization, and it is a relationship I cherish very much.

I’ve been driving to Marlboro in recent years.  And when I drive into South Road for the first time each year, I usually get excited or relieved that I safely arrived.  South Road is a local road that leads to the Marlboro College campus, and it is the road you drive at the end of the two-day road trip.  Usually I feel comfortable driving back to this place.  It’s almost like you never left — pretty much everything looks familiar to me.  But this year wasn’t the same.  This time around, I was neither excited nor relieved driving into South Road.

It has been 10 days since I arrived here, and I’m already exhausted.  I’m still not excited, and definitely not relieved.  Since I’m not that anxious to get back to the painful reality, I do not wish this festival were much shorter, but I do feel that I am heavy-hearted thinking about this festival and that my days here will eventually get tougher and tougher…

And I do think that is partially because of my wrist.  I’m off the cast now, but remember that I was pretty inactive while I was still in the cast for nearly 7 weeks.  And I am still in a brace when I need to engage in some physical tasks.  I assume that my body wasn’t quite ready for this busy and social lifestyle.

Here is my first day-off of the season — time to rest and recollect.  And Miles and I are planning on taking the boat out on a lake to fish today.  I’m hoping that fishing will just do the trick for me — I sure want to feel more positive again.  I want to enjoy good and substantial conversations with my old friends and the musicians here.  Here is my first day-off, and I am going to grab this opportunity to turn things around, even just a bit.  I am going to enjoy this day-off.