Re: Oh where oh where has Rick Denney gone?


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Posted by Rick Denney on April 09, 2002 at 14:04:58:

In Reply to: Oh where oh where has Rick Denney gone? posted by Dan on April 08, 2002 at 20:06:54:

As Klau...er...JoeY mentioned, I've been in a state of complete overload.

My wife and I have moved to a new home in the Virginia countryside, far away from neighbors and therefore immune to complaints about tuba sounds. Soundproofing the basement is a project now removed from my list, heh, heh.

It never occurred to me in earlier life that I would be priveleged to live in what I can only think of as a private park, complete with our own pine forest (4000 mature eastern white pines) and still enough yard left to justify a $10,000 tractor. But the transition has been rough, and accompanied by unrelated but poorly timed disasters in other areas. For example, I've been forced to travel every week for the last 6, except for the week of the move itself (which was three weeks ago). Literally within a week of moving my home, my office also moved. I also had a major effort thrust on me to pursue a giant federal contract, which is an astounding amount of work just to develop the proposal. Also, I signed another federal contract I'd been pursuing for two years (and you thought Boston was unfair?--this one affected the livelihood of many), with an accompanying flurry of activity. I have two other projects that need extra hours and lots of time in town, neither of which they have gotten, and they are now behind schedule.

Topping off all those relative trivialities, a close family member has been diagnosed with terminal cancer, adding an overlay of strain and heartache on my wife which I've been trying my best to absorb and off-load from her. This is not an easy task from a hotel in another city.

I'm compelled to add that the recent whining about the unfairness of the auditions in Boston just hasn't seemed too important to me, when I've been faced with getting projects going that control the jobs of many, including myself, and when I've been faced with life issues that make any work issues pale into relative unimportance. I know it sounds arrogant, but there it is. As Greg Lemond (the famous American cyclist before Lance Armstrong) says, when asked about training (and life) getting easier as time goes on, "It doesn't hurt any less, you just go faster."

The (almost) worst thing is that apart from band rehearsals, I've had zero face time on the tuba, and whatever progress I'd made in the last few months has slipped away. This cycle of achieving progress and then losing ground has repeated itself many times for me, and is probably a common feature among most amateurs. And once again, after starting lessons with a major pro, I've had to put them on hold indefinitely because of intervening priorities. This is also a repeating pattern. Flabby chops have been accompanied by a flabby waistline, and the Ironman-poseur of two years ago is now the Jelloman real thing. I think a three-mile run would just about kill me, and I was running 15-milers as recently as October.

I know that the time I have spent on Tubenet and other fora must make people think that I'm retired or idependently wealthy (neither is the case, like most folks I live off what I make and I have to work hard to make it), but the pendulum that gave me all that leisure before is now swinging the other way, though hopefully not for long. I'm finding that I'm not as resilient as I once was.

But the new living room, with the ceiling that slopes to the top of a loft office, really sounds good compared to my previous basement, and a 20J is (hopefully) on the way, so I can foresee some new experiments that will demand my attention once the cardboard is finally cleared away.

Rick "who is back in town for at least a couple of weeks" Denney


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