mrrrrrrrrrgh

Nick is leaving for Greece tonight. I've been doing all I can to help him get ready, since he's been working long hours all week and hasn't had a lot of time for trip errands. Not that I've been sitting on my duff -- it's just that my free hours of the day are usually ones in which stores are always open and not crowded. I guess that's one of the (few) pros of my working hours. I can go to Target or the dry cleaners at 10:00 am on a Tuesday. Goody.

Anyway. Yesterday I had a little meltdown/hissy fit about not getting to go to Greece, and I realized something. I've basically been going full throttle since September without much of a break or vacation of any kind. The fall was full of audition trips and preparing for said audition trips while trying to build my teaching business. Even at Christmas, I had a paltry four days off. Then it was off to Madison, followed by more teaching, and now another Music of the Baroque concert and an entire month of touring in Wisconsin. I feel so lucky that my teaching business is thriving and that I've got singing gigs, but....I NEED A BREAK. I'm feeling the burnout big time. You know when you say something over and over and over and after awhile it doesn't make any sense to you anymore? That's how I feel about teaching singing. I've come to realize that teaching is something you can't do for eight hours a day, and you need to step away from it to gain perspective every now and again. I've tried to explain breathing and support to so many people that I've started to confuse myself. I've tried to make mousy, breathy voices strong; and i feel like I've had some success, but sometimes when nothing is working I just want to throw my hands in the air and give up. I could REALLY use a week off to just be. It would be nice to spend that week in Greece or some warm climate, but I'm not even that picky. I'd be happy to just sit at home, or take a trip to my parents', whom I haven't seen since Christmas.

The thing with freelancers is that we decide when we take our vacations. And when the gigs are rolling in and the teaching business is thriving, it's pretty difficult to go away from all that. I have a feeling that I'm going to get my break come summer, but since it's March and I've got weeks and weeks of work looming ahead of me, I'm feeling pretty pissy that I don't get any much-needed time off.

So I'm grumpy today. And I'm going to miss Nick a lot. And I'm scaaaared of sleeping in our apartment by myself. Could I rent a dog for a couple of weeks? One that doesn't poop in the house? That would be great.