"she could throw a whirling dervish out of whirl..."

I know I can't be alone in this feeling.

You know the one I'm talking about: where your head is filled with a thousand thoughts, all circling 'round and 'round, each one flitting through your consciousness just long enough to make you aware of its presence and to create stress over something yet to come but never staying to see any sort of solution to its unanswered question, just spinning and spinning and spinning, an exercise in perpetual mental motion, an endless series of unresolved chords....

I know you've been here, too.

Right?

Some of my students had a gig tonight. (They did an AWESOME job, by the way.) As I stood with their parents enjoying the performance, one of them asked about my schedule and if I ever stopped moving. I get asked that a lot. I guess my life is pretty crazy, but so is everyone else's. Being insanely busy is not unique. It's an expectation.

I just read about this recently in a book, Ordering Your Private World, which we are studying in my small group. (It's a great book so far. I recommend it.) The author makes the case that in today's world it is a badge of honor to be constantly busy, constantly exhausted, constantly moving... If someone isn't, then they are perceived as inadequate. But, he goes on to say, the fact that society expects this sort of life does not necessarily mean that it is the right way to live.

I love my busy life. I can't remember a time when I didn't live this way. I can still tell you most of my high school after-school schedule: which days were for full orchestra, youth symphony, piano lessons, choir, chamber orchestra, the trek to A2 for violin lessons, etc. I remember doing homework during long passages of rests at FYSO rehearsal, because on Tuesdays there was only an hour and a half between the end of chamber rehearsal and the time I needed to be on the road to the FSPA. I remember crazy Wednesdays in Lent when we'd all stick around after choir and eat dinner together before the weekly Lent church services. I remember cramming in calc homework in the car on the way to Ann Arbor. Life has just always been like this. Busy, busy, busy. It's what I do. It's how I live.

And usually I live it with joy.

But sometimes I feel like a hamster on a wheel, wondering when the insanity will end.

Today has been one of those days.

But it always looks better in the morning.

You've been here, too, haven't you?