Just really bummed

ETA: Maybe I was unclear before. My teacher and I are totally square now; these two lessons this semester were to pay back for two I paid for in the fall but didn't get then.

I can ask around about another teacher (I think it's close to time for a tuning, also, and maybe the tuner would have a suggestion). I don't know. Part of it is I don't like change and I really WOULD like to continue with this teacher if it became possible. And part of it is past bad experience telling me "A really super-srs musician may not want to work with you."

I misinterpreted what my piano teacher said earlier. She could come in this semester to make up the two lessons I had paid for but missed (once because she was sick, once because I was out of town), but she's not able to continue, because she wants to try to find a job more in line with what her background and interests are, and so she's going to devote all her time right now to that. (And I'm sure that as her only student, it was expensive for her to drive the 25 minutes or so each way). I totally understand her decision, but that doesn't stop me from being really bummed out about it. (And there is the biggest frustration for me about adulthood: there's stuff you can't change, that you don't like, but you just have to deal with it. You can't throw a tantrum, because that does no good and anyway makes you look immature. You can't beg and plead because that's not fair to the other person who is making the decision the way they did because they had to. You're just stuck, and you have to accept it, even though you don't like it.)

She said she'd call if she got a job locally and could teach again, or if more local students expressed an interest.

It's probably too late for me to pick another teacher for this semester. And anyway, I'm really leery with going with a piano professor here on campus, because I'm afraid they wouldn't want to work with someone who:

a. Is older, and therefore learns and progresses more slowly (and also has a tiny bit of arthritis starting up)
b. Has really small hands (My reach is, on good days, an octave plus one.)
c. Is afraid of performing publicly (but might be willing to work on that, but doesn't want to do it throw-me-into-the-pool style where I have to just do it all at once)
d. Doesn't plan on being a concert pianist, or making a living playing piano
and
e. Can manage to steal, at most, an hour and fifteen minutes a day away from her other duties in order to practice. (I read somewhere about how "serious" pianists practice eight hours a day and I got really discouraged....)

Also, I have bad memories from years back of a clarinet teacher who used to play in a symphony who said to me that unless I planned to work hard enough to get good enough to do it professionally, I was wasting my time and his. That made me angry and even as I knew it was untrue (people should be able to do things they enjoy, for the sake of enjoying them, and hell, he still got paid to teach whether I became a professional or not) it discouraged the heck out of me and I gave up the clarinet shortly after.

I am going to continue to play, and she did note, "You know a lot now and you can keep going on your own until you find a new teacher or I can teach again" but still, I'm really bummed.

And yeah, I did this thing over the summer, and yeah, I know the pattern of assignments she gave me (a scale to work on, a page out of the exercise book - and I have just started the current one, and have the next in the series) and then one or two actual pieces to work on, so I can do that. And I did practice the standard 20 minutes I do in the morning this morning (working on the piece - a polonaise by Michael Hadyn (the brother of the slightly-better-known Franz Joseph). But still, I'm bummed.

Last night, when she told me, my reaction was mild: "Oh, I'm sorry to hear that, that's too bad." (I had been thinking these two week's lessons were just make-up for the missed time, and then at the end of yesterday she'd ask me to pay for the next eight or so lessons). I'm not generally someone who expresses strong emotion comfortably in front of others - I hate to cry in public.

But after she left, I sat down and tried to read a couple of journal articles I had brought home to read. I had a hard time concentrating, especially on one (but it wasn't very well-written, I think: some ecology journal articles are clear and easy to follow the thread of, even for complex topics; others are so full of jargon and obfuscation that my mind starts wandering immediately, even with knitting to sop up that wandering-mind tendency). I finally gave up a bit after 7:30 and turned on the (rerun) of NCIS that was playing.

I didn't realize it, but it was the first one from this season - the one where Tony plans on going looking for Ziva. And towards the very end, when he's trying to e-mail her but she's not responding, they start playing some song - I don't even know the name or most of the words but it has sort of a Celtic tonality to it (the haunting sound) and it seems to me it was about seeking someone or something that was lost. And while it wasn't the specific situation that did it, the sad song and sad situation did it and I started bawling.

It was an ugly cry. Once in a while, when I've just had it, and I start crying, it's hard for me to stop. And the thing that got to me in the first place (here - having to give up piano lessons, with the broader theme of Adulthood Means Disappointment) tends to burrow into my subconscious and dig up things I'd already mourned before, already dealt with, and kind of zombify them, and so there's a big old Party Of Suck going on in my brain, where things I had stopped being bugged by three months ago come back and bug me again.

And so there was the one theme of me thinking, "I had one thing. One thing I looked forward to every week; one thing that fed the last slightly grandiose daydream I had [becoming good enough at the piano to be able to play for other people], and now I don't even have that. I DON'T HAVE ANY DREAMS LEFT TO DREAM"

And then I thought of that ad that had been annoying me, from some tax-preparation software company, where they show someone getting married, someone having a new baby, someone buying a house, someone getting a new job, and the voice-over talks about if you've had any of these changes in your life, you can still do your taxes with their software. And I realized: I've had ZERO changes in my life in the past year like that. I haven't had ANY changes in several years. My life is like "Groundhog Day" - I get up, work out, go to work, teach, maybe work a little on research, come home, knit or read, lather, rinse, repeat.  And while the stability of that (no bad drama, no fear of where I will lay my head at night or where my next meal comes from) is usually comforting to me, right then it felt very sad and Eleanor Rigby - that I'd live out my life and be gone, and leave no more dent on the world than a leaf falling on a snowbank.

And I thought of something I saw on The Weather Channel; they were covering the crazy weather in Atlanta and were interviewing a woman passenger in a car that was stuck in slow traffic because of the snow, and she said, "I'm afraid we're going to run out of gas." And her husband,* who was driving, looked at her and calmly said "Babe, we're not going to run out of gas."

And that got to me, because I need that in my life. I need someone to look at me when I'm freaking out over something I don't really need to be freaking out over, and say whatever the equivalent of "Babe, we're not going to run out of gas" would be for that situation.

(*I assumed it was her husband. I got the sense this was a pair of people who'd been together for a while. I suppose it could have been another male significant other, but I doubt my brother would ever call me "Babe," for example)

Because I do that. I get into situations where something gets to me and I kind of obsess about it, and it's probably worse because I don't really have anyone I feel terribly comfortable talking it over with (I don't want to burden my friends at church; a lot of them are dealing with more junk in their lives than I have. And it looks unprofessional to do that to colleagues). It would be nice to have someone around who's a bit steadier in that respect and who could look at me and go, "Babe. We're not going to run out of gas" and kind of bring me back to reality when I stray away into Panic Town.

(Then again: I've had friends and grad-school colleagues who would have done the "We're not going to run out of gas" thing, and then we actually WOULD and I'd be walking there alongside of them, trying to help carry the gas can and find a station, and I'd be silently resenting them for being irresponsible but also knowing that saying, "WHAT did I TELL you about the GAS?" wouldn't help things any.)

And of course, that also brought up other stuff....missed opportunities, "Why Didn't You Be More Social In Grad School Because That Was Really Your Last Chance For Meeting Someone Even If You Didn't Realize It At The Time" and "What Are You Going To Do If You Get Old And Sick And Don't Have Anyone Nearby" and all those other things that some smug-marrieds say without realizing how hurtful and unpleasant they are.

I'm feeling some better this morning....I suspect being able to cry about stuff last night helped in a way. (And usually, sleeping on stuff helps). Still, I'm really bummed about the piano thing and I don't know whether to just practice this semester on my own and try to find someone new in the summer, or hold out hope that she can start teaching again, or what.

This morning, when I was working out, I saw the box where I had exiled my Pony figurines (yeah, I never got around to getting a dedicated shelf for them) and thought sadly, Well, now you could go and arrange them on the piano again like you had them before. And then I thought: I wonder which magical-thinking process would be more likely to work: Don't put them back out and that means she'll get a job in town right away, it will be like things were waiting for her to be able to come back and teach or Put them back out because then you'll have to go to all that effort of removing them again if she can teach, and so, by doing that (and then having to take them down again) that extra effort will somehow call the universe into action into getting her a job in town and one that gives her time to teach.

Yeah, I know magical thinking doesn't really work but I admit I occasionally engage in it. (FWIW: I didn't make a decision, nor did I move any Ponies.)

(I didn't watch the SOTU. I wasn't planning on it anyway. I used to watch them, back when I was a new voter, because I had somehow got the impression that This Was Part of Being an Adult. Somewhere in Clinton's second term I realized that they seemed to be largely rah-rah idealistic speeches of what the president believed and wanted to do, and that I was better served going to bed early but watching what actually happened in politics as it happened....)