As promised. And this one made me think…about a lot of things.

1. My entire existence has been slowly eaten away by these comp exams coming up in April. I have realized that this particular scenario is largely choice-driven, to wit: I am allowing it to happen. Actually, I’m making it happen. So I’m choosing now to stop it. If I can’t design a quantitative study to BU’s specifications in two hours, writing by hand in a Bluebook, well then I’ll take my lumps, fail the exam, and try harder next time. I’ve got to stop thinking that if I fail the first time, I’ve failed completely. I do have three chances. And as Mother used to say, “Worrying changes nothing.” In fact, she and Dad also said that worrying is actually a sin; it’s the belief that God is not in control and He might screw stuff up. Yikes. (Latent guilt, anyone?)

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2. No matter what my students may think (I can be difficult in rehearsals, I know that), they’re pretty OK in my book. I count myself fortunate.

3. Even though I’m growing to hate 2-hour delays, I am grateful and content, sitting here drinking my coffee and writing to you.

4. The two girls doing that tap feature in Dinner Theatre are going to be très cute. That makes me happy.

5. Even though the present article I’m reading in the Journal of Research in Music Education makes absolutely zero sense to me, I am determined to figure it out, which gives me a much-needed feeling of resolve, and just a little confidence. I will, this day, discover what “…the majority of loadings exceed .40 and only one cross-loading exceeded .40…sampling adequacy was established using the Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin measure…assumption of sphericity was also met as evidenced in the Bartlett Test of Sphericity” means.

6. And when it all shakes out, as I’ve said before, it’s your family who count. They are your “now” and your legacy. I remind myself of this, and I am content.

Fink out (for more coffee).