So today's my birthday, and I spent the day first teaching my class, then attending a seminar, then reading for a few hours at Starbucks. I didn't resent it at all, cos I got to celebrate my birthday a day early, thanks to the wonderful people who bought me dinner at Trivia, and Lynn who bought me my birthday fruit tart, and all of them who sang the birthday song to me. I think it was near the top of the list for my favorite birthday celebrations.

But I digress. So I was at Starbucks this evening, not resentful, but very tired. The orals process is winding down into its last weeks, and I still have a bunch of reading and synthesizing to do. I'm glad that it's almost over, though, cos I'm mentally tired. It's been months of the same, and I'm ready to move on to the next phase of my life--I only hope I do well enough on the exam to.

But I digress again. So I was at Starbucks this evening, not resentful, mentally tired. The thing that made my day today was observing someone across the room, obviously a student of music, getting so caught up in the music he was reading or writing or whatever it was that he started to conduct right there in the middle of the coffeeshop. There was no band, and no music--all in front of him was his computer. And it wasn't affected or poserish. He just obviously had gotten into his work and forgot everything else.

That kind of careless abandon was refreshing and fun to watch. It made me feel good, happy, better about my own work. It reminded me that I, too, get to do what I love. And while, perhaps, I'm most times too self-conscious to be able to abandon myself like that and get caught up in my work, I've definitely experienced that passionate feeling over a great passage in a book, over a class that went really well, over observing a student at a moment of realization or understanding.

Thanks, Conductor Guy.