Tuesdays & Wednesdays, + Thursday Micro-Practices

I have been dealing with a lot of anxiety lately. I've had issues with the depression in the past, but anxiety has never been that much of a problem for me ... until now. Some of it has to do with work stress, some has to do with money stress, and some is just plain old life stress. While the cost of piano lessons adds somewhat to the money stress, the escape of practice and the anticipation of the next lesson have helped me make it through these last few weeks.

I'm finding that I tend to hit a low point on Wednesday evenings. Let's see why:

On Tuesdays, I have a full day of work, including a required meeting at noon.
On Tuesday evenings, I am the leader for a combined Tiger/Wolf/Bear Cub Scout Den.
On Wednesdays, I have a full day of work, including a required meeting from 12:30 to 2:00.
On Wednesday evenings, I volunteer to teach a pre-school class at church.
On Wednesday nights, I have choir practice.

So, as you might imagine, I can go two days without touching the piano, and not from lack of desire to do so. Tuesdays and Wednesdays are like whirlwinds, and I collapse, exhausted, into bed on Wednesday nights.

Except there's this other anxiety thing I'm dealing with: insomnia, accompanied by random panic attacks as I lie in bed and the worries and cares of life race through my brain.

This morning I still managed to wake up early enough to work on some scales. I'm on my lunch hour right now, and I've already managed to have two micro-practices today:

Early this morning from about 7:40 to 8:00, I ran through my major scales and six minor scales. I also worked on Hanon, practicing playing loud/soft in a controlled manner.
For about 10 minutes at lunch, I worked through the other six minor scales and played through the Schubert coda three times at a slow pace.

I think I'm ready to go to the next section of the Schubert. Since I'm working backwards, that will be the last few measures before the coda begins.

I have a Cub Scout recruiting event at 5:30, and then my daughter has taekwondo at 6:30, so we won't be home until about 7:30 tonight. Luckily, we have plenty of leftovers for dinner, which means I won't have to cook or wash a bunch of dishes ... which means that I just might have some time for Bach and Chopin tonight!

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