Typically I find this time of year quite stressful. The change in season, the change in schedule, the change in daylight...all these changes often hit me hard. Although this particular spring-into-summertime has had its share of stressful events (both created and imposed), I find I am happier than I've been a while. A long while. And significantly happier. Like since living-breathing-eating-sleeping Ireland happy. There are many plausible explanations to my new found happiness: successful completion of my yoga teacher training, looking forward to new summer travels, finding myself in the single life (and loving it!), just generally having more life experience under my belt, completion of my fourth year teaching. But I feel that the one aspect that has made the most significant change: embarking on 63 days of tunes.
As I've mentioned, 63 days was an arbitrary number I came up with by simply drawing a calendar that looked like "enough" then counting how many days I drew. As I come to complete week 5 I am more and more convinced that playing everyday has set my heart free again. What could have been a task is instead a part of my day I look forward to with eager anticipation ("when will I get to pick up my fiddle!?"). Occasionally I must set a timer to make sure I reach my minimum of 20 minutes - usually when I'm tired and haven't had a moment to myself all day - but it is more often a timer so that I force myself to stop to do something I need to. Like sleep. Or buy groceries. I've put off buying food because I sat down to play instead at least three times since this started. I used tunes as a motivation to get my grades on: finish one class, take a 5 minute tune break. If I get upset about something at work, I try to take a moment and grab my fiddle for a few tunes. Daily tunes has become a sanctuary of escape for me to absorb the happiness. I would recommend looking for happiness as a True Believer to anyone.
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