Sure, why not

When I was a teenager--a surly, unresponsive, depressed teenager--my grandmother used to give me a lot of advice that I never heeded.
One of her main themes was: Just stay busy. It doesn't really matter doing what. Just create some busy work to keep your mind off your troubles.
I never much cared for that idea, though, mainly because I didn't want to look back on a day spent in trivial tasks of the kind she usually suggested. I didn't want a lot of hobbies. I wanted my life to be so much bigger.
Now that I've lived longer and find myself somewhat stuck in a pessimism pattern I don't know how to get out of, I'm willing to take a second look at busy-ness as an attitude adjuster.
I've been busy before. The years I was working on a music composition degree while teaching and raising kids were busy. And I was so, so glad when things finally began to let up.
But to be honest, there are good points to busy-ness. You get the satisfaction of having accomplished a lot. When it's over. You get the exhilaration of the deadline push and the feeling of being needed by others.
Maybe that's what was going through my head when I agreed to take on not one but two big tasks for music teacher organizations this fall. Then again maybe it was just good old-fashioned mental illness.
Whatever the subconscious reason, I find myself heading up the directory yearbook for Federated Music Teachers and coordinating Fall Festival for the Kansas City Music Teachers--two volunteer jobs at which I have no previous experience. Fall Festival, in particular, gets unusual and amusing reactions from most other piano teachers when I mention I've signed on (ducking down, covering the face, the index-finger sign of the cross).
As advertised, Fall Festival doesn't happen until fall. But already I've had one mini-heart attack crisis having to do with the venue.
It's funny how the events of the past year have loosened me up and reset my personal bar of crazy. In the past, I might have been too terrified to take on the festival. But you know what went through my head when they called me this year? "Fall Festival? What's the worst that could happen? Would it be worse than a pay cut? Worse than the erasure of our college fund? Fall festival? This is nothing."
So, yes, by all means, let's test this idea. Let's keep my idle hands from becoming the devil's keyboard--er--playground.
Perhaps it will end in disaster. But it couldn't possibly be worse than the year we've just endured.