Tag: schedule

Beethoven’s Routine

The Portly Politico4 Comments

Long-time readers know that I love Beethoven (particularly his Sixth Symphony, the “Pastoral”).

Readers also might know that I keep a fairly busy schedule.  Doing so requires sticking to routine, but that’s not always my strong suit.  My mind tends to jump from one task to another, but I find that writing out a detailed “to-do” list and crossing it off helps me to focus in on a task for extended periods of time.

When I really get into something—working on a new collection of piano miniatures, grading papers, or writing blog posts—I can focus in for hours, and often do that.  But working into that flow state takes time and, more importantly, motivation.  It’s the latter that I have been lacking the past week, a combination of end-of-the-school-year exhaustion and a renewed interest in Civilization VI.

So I thought it’d be interesting during this winding down season—when my own routine is about to change to the more leisurely pace of summertime—to look at Beethoven’s daily routine, care of YouTube channel Inside the Score.

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SubscribeStar Saturday: Yuletide Mania

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Today’s post is a SubscribeStar Saturday exclusive.  To read the full post, subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for $1 a month or more.  For a full rundown of everything your subscription gets, click here.

The Christmas season is upon us, and nary did Thanksgiving end did the insane scrambling of the season commence.

Regular readers know I’m a hustler—I’ve always got some moneymaking schemes going:  primarily private music lessons, but also gigging, writing, calling sporting events, staging concerts, selling t-shirts, hawking weird art, etc.  These are all fun activities in addition to being lucrative, but it’s easy for them to get overwhelming, especially when they all hit at once.

Well, Christmastime—at least the first couple of weeks of December—seems to be a time when everything comes to a head at the same time (thus today’s later-than-usual post).  This past week was particularly grueling, with a number of events requiring my attention, sometimes nearly at the same time.

For those interested in the opportunities of perils of juggling different side gigs and responsibilities, today’s post will detail how I managed to teach almost all of my lessons for the week and setup lighting and sound for a pageant; reset that lighting and sound for a play; attended play tech and dress rehearsals; played a dinner at church and will play a longer Christmas set today; rode in a parade; and successfully made it through two stagings of the aforementioned play.

To read more of this post, subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for $1 a month or more.