I keep a bit of a wall up on the personal side of social media. I've gotten a lot of mileage over the years on YouTube and Facebook (and, of course, my email list) in connecting with people who are interested in the music side of things. But beyond that, on the personal side, it doesn't go much beyond the occasional grandchild pictures. The lines may be a little blurred when it comes to this blog, but not much, really, or perhaps just not at all. The personal (who I am) and the professional (what I do) can have much, and even profound, intersection in someone who is all big picture all the time, with little ability to compartmentalize anything.Who I am, personally, is fully inseparable from what I do (or who I am) professionally. But you know what I mean. I'm not the friend on Facebook who is reliably going to detail  his medical issues,  political opinions (to the extent I may have them), who I have a beef with, or (speaking of beef) what I had for lunch. Though now, I'm inclined to open the window a bit, or (looking at the above photo) the door to the apartment balcony. For the last several months, finding sudden and unexpected hairpin turns and potholes on my personal path, I've been living in a temporary apartment situation right above a coffee shop. The last few months have opened up a particular "season" of life, that I can best describe as like riding a wave. Not sure where it is taking me, and I am okay with that. And not just okay with it, I fully embrace it. What I have been training to do, in the spiritual discipline of practicing and playing the piano is essential here, just as in the broader scheme of things. Trust. Getting out of my own way and allowing it to happen; to come to and through me. Like an improvisation at the piano; when it is fully happening, I am a participant/observer in something that is bigger than me, and beyond what I could predertime to construct or concoct. I'm in the middle of a story, or at least a chapter in the larger story. I'm proposing to put it in writing, once I am out the other side (whatever that means). Now I'll just say that I'm preparing for the next turn on the road, where I can't yet see around the corner. But whatever it is, and wherever it takes me is what I am being prepared for. And the one thing I can say that I am determining purposefully to do, is to be ready. To be open, To trust. To step into the improvised solo that is already formed once I play the first note, and is revealed to me as I go. As goes my professional life, so goes my personal life, and vice versa.