Wherein I prove that I'm a girl and prone to emotional discontent

I've been really.... hmmmm... on edge for the last few weeks. Thankfully, the general feeling of incompetence has been defeated, and I am no longer worried that my new students will be cheated with me as their teacher. (That was kind of irrational on the face, so it's good that that's gone.) I'm 98% done with a task (scheduling lessons) which was causing more stress than I had anticipated. Everything is ready to go on the job front come Labor Day. :)

I was thinking last night about how glad I was that the 60-hr. a week marching band schedule (plus the 16 hrs. of private lessons) was not going to be for me this year. I was so excited. It's not that I was looking forward to the free time (because, truthfully, the lesson schedule isn't that much lighter time-wise) but it's that I was going to be spending my waking hours doing something that I really, really loved. Working with students one-on-one = awesome. Setting my own schedule = wonderful. There are just so many fabulous things that are going to come from this arrangement that I am just very thankful that I've been allowed to do this for a while.

But reality has kind of set in on what I'm doing, and that is what is causing the background of discontent. I realized last night what I had really signed up for in converting my studio to a full-time endeavor - I'm signing up for a year of being really lonely. It's going to be like this summer, only... for a whole year. I don't mind being alone (in fact, I quite prefer it to a variety of other arrangements), but I do mind being lonely. I don't get depressed or despondent about it, but I do get irritated. I tend to bake and read more. (Of course, I do those things when I'm happy, too, so the only conclusion one can draw from my reading and/or baking habits is that I'm either really happy or really irritated.)

Here's the thing, I know that the vast majority of my six readers are older and far smarter than I am. I'm wondering if any of you have been through something vaguely similar and can tell me if this is going to get better. If it is not, it would just be nice to know so that I can start building a larger sausage allowance into my budget. Comments or an e-mail (look in the sidebar) will be very much appreciated, if anyone has any words of wisdom to pass on. In the mean time, I'm going to be spending my next three-ish weeks of vacation listening to pleasant music and thinking of beautiful places and paintings. It's really not a bad life, it just comes with a little more tension than I had anticipated.