Making important changes

One of the biggest challenges in being a parent with two daughters is constant busyness and chaos. Our house is rarely clean, because of the fact that both girls like to constantly get into everything. That's one of my projects for this Memorial Day weekend, is to clean and organize the house. But as I've been thinking about that today, I'm at that point overall in my life. For the past 5 years, I've been quite busy as a full-time Music Director, and private music teacher, teaching anywhere between 9 and 24 lessons each week. Add into that being a dad, and over the past school year, taking on a part-time teaching position, I've been going, going, going. And now it's time to slow down.

I'm not slowing down in what I'm doing, exactly. In fact, over this summer, I hope to be busier. But I have less lessons scheduled for the summer than I ever have, but that's not a horrible thing. I have events scheduled, time with family, and other things going on. My hope for this summer is to do some sorting and organizing in my professional life. Planning ahead, figuring out what is most important, not as important, and what is least important. How best to involve others, and how in the world do I get other people involved? (Asking them is a start!!)

One of the things I intend to do over the summer is to be intentional in composing music. I've wrestled with this for years, having ideas for handbells, vocal choirs, hymn verse settings, instrumental arrangements, and contemporary songs. One of the biggest questions I've asked is why. Why should I write music? What's the point? Is it to make money? That answer is an obvious no. I've finally come to that conclusion that God has given me these ideas, and I am supposed to share them with people, and if God blesses it and it goes somewhere, great. If not, and I bless a few with it, that's great too. So, over the next couple of weeks, I'll be updating my music website (www.harmannymusic.webs.com) with compositions that will be available for free (or if you want to give a donation, that's cool), but the only thing I ask is for your feedback.

So, there's lots that I want to accomplish. I'm putting them here, as I've always struggled with motivation and discipline. I hope that if I keep putting it out there publicly, that will kick my tail into keeping up with it, and focus me on bettering myself.