Paseo Arts Festival Music and WAKARUSA!

I've been working on the music for the south stage at the Paseo Arts Festival the past few months and it's been a great learning experience. I've loved getting to talk with and schedule bands, dancers, poets and more. Plus, everyone on the committee has been so patient while I've learned how to do this. I feel more than lucky to have found a community of people that I will be working with that accepts us and treats us with so much respect.  Plus they're fun! Here are some pics from one of our meetings to prove it! :)

Gayle Brought Us All Butterfly Ears :)

Even Royce Joined in the Fun

I was glad my "ears" coordinated with my outfit. Ha! 

Jo and Nikki Always Make Me Giggle! 

But I've had a lot on my plate...just like everyone else I know.  I'm not complaining because everything I've done, I've chosen to do.  Nobody made me do this and I'm honestly grateful for the experience. I know that when the festival is over I will be happy that it all went well and that it was great people who made it all happen, but the truth is that I've been a little stressed out.  Between final papers, developing sixtwelve, the music at the festival, an event James has been planning on our lot for during the festival, and trying to have a life with some downtime, I can honestly say that I took on too much.

So what changes do I need to make?  I need to slow down.  I need to rest.  I need to say "no" more often. I need to be fine with just being still.  Which believe me, now I am. :)

So how am I going to do these things?  Well, the first thing I'm going to do after the festival is take a little trip.  A group of wonderful girls have invited me to go with them to a music festival, Wakarusa, and some of my other friends are going too.  I'm looking forward to this because I'm not taking my computer and I might not even get phone service out there.  I'm going to totally disconnect from technology for almost a whole week. Yes!

Did I mention that we're camping out? I'm so excited.  I know it's not going to be a peaceful, "camping by the stream" kind of experience. It will be loud and crazy! But it won't be like my life here; always on the go and pushing myself to make things happen.  I'm going to go with the flow and just soak up the music.  Plus, I never went to a multi-day, camp out music festival when I was in my 20s or 30s so now is the time! I might not want to go when I'm 50.  (Who knows? Maybe I will.  Haha!)  I just keep thinking about the fact that we only have this moment that we're in. Who knows what tomorrow holds?  In fact, there's a group that thinks the world is going to end tomorrow.  Here's a picture I took in March of their vans in the mall parking lot!

Sooooo, in the spirit of living in the moment and grabbing life by the horns and doing as much as you can with it, I think I'll go have some ice cream.  The carbs and sugar won't matter if I'm not going to be around tomorrow anyway.  :)

But if for some reason, we get to see another day, I'm going to slow down, exercise more and say no. I've got too much to be grateful for to let stress dictate the quality of my life.