Sometimes it feels like everything I am doing is a distraction from something else, but perhaps that is because I am plate spinner.

Just this afternoon, I went outside to take the trash out, and noticed a few weeds in the garden bed. Before I knew it, I was donning my gardening gloves and pecking at those weeds until they were gone, gone, gone. But then I noticed some more in another bed, so I pulled those. Next thing I knew, hours had passed and it was getting dark. Time to come in and finish doing what I was doing before I took out the trash—writing a concert press release. Just as I was finishing it, a tune I hadn’t heard before caught my attention. It was playing on Spotify in the background. Pretty. In D-flat. That reminded me…I was working on a piece in D-flat just a few days ago. After I finished the press release, I went upstairs, to the piano, where I reminisced about my music doodlings in Db. I actually started to get somewhere with the piece when I realized needed to get dinner started. I prepared dinner, and while the oven heated to 350 I returned to the piano for another twenty minutes. I  worked out a few solid tricky measures. My husband then reminded me we hadn’t yet booked flights for the next music conference, so I put the chicken into the oven before heading back downstairs to my computer. Lance the cat jumped up on the desk and demanded his “lovies.” I pet the cat for a few minutes and then booked flights with the cat spread across my desk. During dinner my husband and I discussed a music marketing idea and then brainstormed about next summer’s vacation plans. With the news on the background, I answered emails from fans, paid a few bills, and prepared mock set lists for this coming season’s holiday programs.

For musicians, the line between “work” and “life” can be very thin. Sometimes I feel it is hard to tell if I am “working”or not. Music is on my mind while doing the laundry, gardening, driving to a doctor’s appointment, cooking a meal. Back and forth I go between life and work—so much and so often, I can’t tell which world I am in. I am in both most of the time I guess. One thing is interrupted for another, but each interruption “informs” the next task, and somehow, it all gets done. “Spinning plates” I call it, although most references on the internet have negative connotations for the term because it refers to juggling many things at once. I am a plate spinner and proud of it and impressed by good jugglers!  Are you a “plate spinner” too? Tell me about it: robin@robinspielberg.com