Quick Thursday recap: Practiced in the morning, biked to the grocery store at noon, new/old student mid-afternoon, skype lesson after that, dinner and then out to see the Suffering Fuckheads and to welcome Carl back to Seattle in the evening.
Interesting thing about the new/old student. When someone decides to stop taking lessons, 9 times out of 10 they use some variation of “I’m going to ‘take a break’ for a while” followed by “I need to focus on” fill in the blank, and some explanation such as “my family” and/or “work is just really complicated right now”, or something along those lines. And a lot of it is absolutely true. Maybe most of it. The rest is just being polite. In any case I know that I’m never going to see them again. It’s okay. I never take it personally. Life in this line of work would just be unbearable if I did. Students come and go. I have been thinking about this lately, since this is one of the times of year that I know is going to be highly transitional, and I have already had this conversation with a couple of people. So this afternoon’s student is one of those rare exceptions. Haven’t seen him in over 2 years. Never expected to see him again, and then out of the blue there he is, describing the work and family complications that he finally got ironed out, so now he’s ready to get back to work. Go figure.
Funniest sign-off, sent in the form of a text: “My wife just went into labor, so I have to cancel today. I’ll email you next week when things settle down.” I’ve never had children, but even I knew that was a sentence only a first-time father could type. I just laughed. Perhaps I’ll hear from him in 18 years, when things settle down.
Most irrefutable sign-off: “We’re are making a test tube baby so there's lots of time and money spent on that.” I hear that.
Onward.
No problem waking up and actually getting up the last two days. Dreams persist, and I still haven’t had any kind of insight about what it is I’m trying to tell myself. It will come, I’m sure. Early skype call this morning with the SCGS team – very good stuff. Doing a little laundry and house cleaning. One more skype conference call coming up around noon, and then I am hopping on the bicycle to do a little tour-de-north-of-the-canal with my new postcards, posting them on bulletin boards and putting them out on counters, to see if I can drum up a few more students to make up for the ones that have recently decided to take a break for one of any number of very good reasons.
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Note to self-promoters out looking for bulletin boards on which to place flyers, postcards, or business cards: If you walk into a café and don’t see a bulletin board, head to the bathroom. Just outside the restroom is where coffee shops tend to place their boards. It’s not totally off the wall, as people drinking coffee often need to hit the head.
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