People who read this blog are usually here because they’re interested in my music life, so I don’t usually wrote about my day job. But I’m thinking about my day job – college professoring – today, because I have just over a week left before it enters its intense phase, and I’m not ready. Most pressingly, I need to make syllabi for two courses as well as create course websites (which also involves getting all the readings scanned and posted). In addition, the latest book I’ve written just showed up in the form of page proofs, which need to be carefully examined and all existing errors caught and corrected (one of the most time-consuming and mind-numbing activities I engage in). In other words, there’s a lot to do in the next week that doesn’t relate to music, and stress that goes along with these things and the impending semester. There are also two music-related initiatives that I’ve been invited to participate in, specifically this week, and I need to figure out whether to do them. The first is the re-launch of the “cover your friends” blog, in which independent (and somewhat obscure) singer-songwriters learn and play (and make a video of) a song by different independent (and somewhat obscure) singer-songwriters they’re friends with. It’s a great project (I learned Susan Levine’s song Michael the last time I participated, and it eventually inspired a song of mine that’s one of my current favorites), and I’d love to support it, but I have only this weekend to make it happen. I actually started the process yesterday – I picked a song by my friend Alicia McGovern and figured out how to play it (and figured out the lyrics). So I’ve got the basics down, but I haven’t yet memorized the song, which is complex and changing throughout, so there’s more work to be done on it, not to mention making the video, which is something I’m not fast at. The other, more intense, initiative is a “Fearless Songwriter” week. Timmy Riorden (who I met through the February Album-Writing Month (FAWM) process) runs a Fearless Songwriter website and facebook group in which he tries to get people over their fears of songwriting by just doing it. Every once in awhile he’ll declare a focused week in which people are supposed to write seven songs in seven days. Tomorrow starts one of those periods. And he’s got guest-prompters (to give songwriting ideas on the different days), the first of whom – to bring this all full circle – is Alicia. Now, just as I hadn’t written fourteen songs in twenty-eight (or twenty-nine) days before I did FAWM, I haven’t written seven songs in seven days either. I’m more confident that I could do it, after having gone through the FAWM experience, but it’s still a stretch, and it’s something I only want to jump into if I’m actually going to be able to commit. And I’m trying whether to take on these two challenges right now. I imagine all my music friends and fans jumping in and saying “of course you should do these things! You should prioritize music!” And, in part, I buy that. Moreover, although this week is busy and stressful and there’s a lot I have to accomplish, it’s also true that once the semester starts for real my control over my own schedule will decrease dramatically; in some ways this is the last time for awhile I could even consider setting aside time every day for a week to work on songwriting. But there’s also part of me (especially the part that seems to have caught the virus running through the household this week) that thinks that maybe having this week a little less chaotic than it would be if I added in song-learning and song-writing to my already overfull week wouldn’t be such a bad idea. And I’m not yet sure which of these perspectives will win out.