Quick Hits w/JMS

As with all of my blog posts, this one specifically relates to my own experiences as a public school music teacher and does not, by any means, reflect the experiences of all teachers everywhere. Years ago, Karen Atherton, my supervising teacher for student teaching, told me that teaching music is a lonely job. While it didn't really resonate at the time, it certainly does now. I touched on it in my post,  "Saying Goodbye to Music Education,"  but it bears repeating now- when you are in school (i.e. college) for music, you live  music. You spend all (or the vast majority) of your time alongside other music majors. You might even live WITH them- my last year of undergrad, 3 of my 4 roommates were music majors, and all 5 of us were in the marching band.  OK, here we go... Storytime!! (reality-based with some fantasy mixed in) Imagine living in a giant building with no windows with a bunch of other people who all like, believe in, and do what you like, believe in and do....

First of all, thank you to all who have reached out after my post from a few days ago- something that has been challenging through all of this is remembering that I'm not alone, and I appreciate the texts, messages, comments, and conversations that have come out of that post. Remembering that I am not alone is actually what I wanted to write about today.  Since my anxiety symptoms really started to manifest in a big way several years ago, one of my biggest struggles has been alone-ness.  Back to the Beginning Several years ago, I remember sitting in my office at school chatting with a colleague about some of the challenges that students were facing both in and out of the classroom, namely anxiety. It probably stemmed from emails from guidance counselors- I don't really remember. Anyhow, the gist from him was that he couldn't understand why all of these kids were either missing time from school or needed accommodations because they felt "nervous." As I recall, I pa...

One of my outlets is writing. It’s something I don’t do nearly often enough, but here we are. After a conversation with Molly the other day, I realized that writing has, in the past, been an effective outlet and, as someone who can generally express himself more effectively in writing than he can verbally, it makes sense to come back to this. That said, I choose, now, to write about my challenges and struggles, in the hopes that I can work through some of the significant issues that I’m facing, and maybe, help someone else, too. Please note, I will be sharing things that are not easy for me to talk about and could be triggering if you face similar issues. I would ask that you understand that this level of vulnerability is not normal for me. This is the first in a few posts I'm planning to write, as I don't think I can really process everything at once here. So, here we go. I have severe anxiety. Each day, if I’m not really focused on what I am doing from moment to moment, I ca...