Gratifying

In addition to teaching, coaching, and taking classes, I also make the programs for the track meets for the middle school team I coach. This sounds fairly simple, but it is very time consuming and adds to my stress during the middle school season. The program includes an order of events, a "map" of the facility including starting and finishing lines for each event, rosters of every team in the league (9 teams, with between 70-100 kids per team), results from the previous week's meet, pictures of the kids, a cover, and weekly games/activities. Once I get the roster created I can pretty much use it week after week (unless coaches ask me to make changes - which usually happens until the third or fourth week.) I can also use the order of events and map every week, but the rest of the stuff changes weekly... I take the pictures that I include, which means that on Saturdays I spend the entire day at the facility where we hold our meets. There are 3 meets for our league every Saturday, one of which is the meet my team competes in, so during that meet I get little photo time because I am coaching...but each Saturday I take over 250 pictures... and then have to take time to edit them to see if they are usable for the program... I also try to put some of the better pics on the cover of the program.

Anyway... This year I have had several parents email me to see if they could please get copies of the pictures that are in the program. When I tell them I can email it to them, they get so excited and are so grateful that they have a picture of their kid to send to a grandparent or to print out for their kid... it's nice. I like that something I did made someone else feel good.

I am learning that I really love taking pictures... although I have to say that I prefer to take pictures of nature instead of middle school kids at track meets... but I do get excited when I get a cute candid picture of a kid as they talk to their friends or an action shot, like a kid going over a hurdle...

I think I need to focus, no pun intended, on things like photography that I feel are gratifying to me. I just need to figure out what I want to do with the photos once I take them... some supportive relatives are convinced I could sell them, but where? how? I don't know... but for now, I want to just take them, and play with my camera...

I do have to let y'all in on a little secret... one I am very excited about...

Last month, at the sports banquet for my high school team, I was talking with a couple of the mothers of a couple of my kids... and they were talking about drumming... one woman said her husband takes middle eastern drumming classes..... this caught my ear. A few years back... I went to an event in Portland that was a celebration of sorts for some of the local African cultures... and there was this group, of women... who did this AMAZING music... based mostly in African Drumming... there was something about that music, those drums that brought tears to my eyes, something that made me feel so connected to those rhythms... and I told myself that I would one day love to take a drumming class... The woman who was also listening to this other woman talk about her husband's class, asked if there were other drumming classes. So I asked her if she was interested in taking a class and she said she had always wanted to, but would like to have someone to go with. So I told her I was that person! This is something I would not usually do - get in contact with a parent of one of my kids outside of the coaching or teaching roles I play... but this particular parent is different... and her daughter is a senior, so technically I am no longer her coach... so... it is possible to start a friendship with this woman... Anyway.. I am on a tangent... We decided that we would take a middle eastern drumming class together, even though we both said we would prefer African drumming. (I had looked into local classes in African drumming, but availability was pretty scarce.) So this woman and I have been emailing, and I am so excited to report that she found the middle eastern drumming instructor a little... well... questionable... but said that she had gotten in touch with a woman from a drumming group, Inanna, who said she would be starting a class in African Drumming this spring! WHOA! Inanna, by the way IS the group I had seen years back... which gave me the chills a little... so... I am VERY excited and hope that the scheduling works out for this. I will be taking another class for my masters degree after my current class ends in May... and the second class is 2 nights a week, so I am very much hoping that the drumming will fit in... fingers crossed...