August Thoughts

As I reflect on the month ending and look forward to the one ahead, I'm asking these questions.

• What was new for me in August?

• What did I release, that was no longer serving me?

• What are my intentions for September, and what is one goal I really want to move forward on, even a little bit?

What was new for me?

Readers of this blog may know that I play clarinet, and I've been playing with my local community band for a couple of decades now. What's new for me is a bass clarinet, which I started playing for the first time this month.

Our band's bass clarinetist retired recently. He contributed consistently to the band, playing with energy and excellence for a very long time, and he's now in his mid-nineties, so he's earned some time off.

A full concert band can get along without a bass clarinet because there are other bass instruments – baritones, euphoniums, and tubas, for instance. But sometimes our clarinet section plays as an ensemble, and we have a gig coming up in September. A clarinet ensemble needs a bass, so I volunteered. On August 4th, I went to a music store and rented a bass and started practicing.

Photo: Selfie with bass clarinet

There are similarities between the soprano and bass clarinets, and both share some features with the saxophone. The note fingerings on all those instruments are mostly the same. In high school I switched between playing clarinet during the concert season and tenor sax in the fall, the marching band season. However, these are all distinct instruments, each with its particular challenges for the player.

I've been having loads of fun this month, learning to play the bass clarinet, figuring out how to fit the instrument to my body, more or less comfortably, and how to produce the low notes without squawking – and, oh my goodness, the lowest tones on a bass clarinet are gorgeous.

A result of all this is that I'm experiencing myself, as a musician and a learner, in a new way, and I'm loving it.

What did I release?

I've been a fan of Courtney Carver since 2020. She's a popular blogger on the topic of minimalism, author of books and courses, and creator of The Simplicity Space, an online membership community. For members, Courtney offers a new theme for each quarter-year. The theme for the current quarter – August-September-October – is Release.

What are you ready to release? Use the next three months to release clutter, busyness, stress and overwhelm. – Courtney Carver

This month I released MyAdventureChallenge, and my releasing it does not at all negate my gratitude for the encouragement this online accountability partner gave me to get out there and hike on trails, to train for and then to hike in the National Parks of Arizona and Utah.

Then things changed. Because of the heat out west, plus some unplanned adventures of that trip, I didn't end up hiking the mileage I had anticipated. Returning home I walked my usual daily miles, but not on trails. Then last week, after finally updating my chart with all the AZ-UT hikes, I discovered that I still needed 30 miles – on trails – to complete the "Blazin' Summer" challenge of 65 miles over the three-month season.

That would be an average of 4 miles per day for the rest of the month. I didn't want to spend that much time and energy on that goal. (The nearest trail is a mile from my house, so it's either walk an extra 2 miles, for no credit, or drive to and from the trail – not an environmentally friendly option.)

MyAdventureChallenge had served me well. It was no longer serving me, so I released it, with no guilt.

What are my intentions for September, and what is one goal I really want to move forward on, even a little bit?

Intentions:

• Make a new habit of ending my workday at 4:00 p.m.

• To facilitate that, create a simple routine for the end of the workday – a gentle boundary.

• Play every day.

And the goal I want to move forward on is to spend more time reading books. A guilty secret of mine is that I spend hardly any time now, because reading books is just too much fun. Somewhere, I read a convincing essay on how reading a novel is play, because it takes you into a world of imagination.

So, to move forward "a little bit" on my goal, and also my intention to play every day, I'm aiming to spend 15 minutes each day reading a novel. To that end, I've just ordered a copy of Barbara Kingsolver's latest book, Demon Copperhead.