Striving

I haven't blogged for a while... Not through a lack of potential material! (Photos show afew recent gigs- with 1. Earworms at Exeter Northcott Theatre, 2. with Flute Cake and Rebecca Willson and Bel Canto and David Cottam! Mammoth line up! 3. rehearsing with ESO in Exeter Cathedral) It is difficult to decide how honest to be on a blog like this: should this blog present a professional, polished image of myself or a realistic portrait of who I am? When I became a mother at 24, I frequently trawled the Internet searching for blogs/accounts if what it is like to be a professional musician or a practising artist and to also be a mother and a wife. I couldn't find what I was looking for. I don't really know what I was looking for... Anyway... I'm going to blog in an honest manner else I'll end up not blogging at all. March has been very busy for me: I've done alot of gigs, a record number of my students have taken music exams this term, I've been practising like mad and I've been writing applications for funding to enable me to pay myself to practice and audition and to hugely raise my game. My mum has been diagnosed with Alzheimer's - being an only child raised in Devon(!), I have always possessed a strong sense of family and place - but with my mum getting older I feel a daily closeness to death. I always have done. But now I have an almost irritating feeling of never having done enough - that I will never be able to do enough. I am aware that my desire to push my skills as a flautist - do make me into not such a great mother/lover/practical person. I live my days with a desire to push push push - but often do not have the right balance. I expect myself to excel as a human and as an artist. I know that is not humanely possible, and my mind doesn't believe it, but my heart does. The challenges of general daily tasks combined with the urgency of being alive actually really upsets and confounds me. I never thought it would be so hard. My mum made it look easy.