Faith

Today was one of the strangest days I’ve ever had. It started out fairly normal- got up a little earlier than usual, no big deal, got to school early for a scale jury, passed, as expected. Rehearsed a little with a quartet for a student composer’s piece. Then I had my lesson. And through the lesson (which was one of the hardest I’ve had) and talking afterwards, I finally understood a lot of things. Or, a few really important things that affect a lot of things. Either way, I learned a lot.

Long story short, my recital is in less than a week, some stuff isn’t really ready that should have been.

My teacher is wonderful. She’s a wonderful violist, teacher, and person. She really cares about teaching. And she’s probably the hardest worker I know. We talked about a lot of things, the specifics of which aren’t important to this post, except for this.: You have to believe you can do it.

You have to believe you can do it.

Wow.

YOU have to believe YOU can do it.

Ok you probably get the point. But I didn’t. Not yet, at least.

Then I had rehearsal with my regular quartet. I sort of pushed these thoughts out of my mind for the time being and learned some other great things, like how wonderful apple cider yogurt is and how cute ultrasound pictures are.

When that ended I stayed to practice. And this is where the major weirdness comes in. I’d fiddled around (metaphorically, haha) for a while, still trying to process everything. I sat down to practice a passage we’d worked on at my lesson. I was pretty interested in working on it the way we had in my lesson. Breaking it down and all. Stuff I should know how to do, but seem to forget every week. But I decided to try something different this time. You have to believe you can do it.

Sounds easy, right? Just say to yourself, “hey you can do it!.” I looked at the passage I was working on. For some reason I decided I needed to say it out loud: “I can play this passage in tune, at this tempo…etc.” So I tried.

It didn’t work.

You know how when you’re on the verge of tears and you get choked up and just can’t make a sound? No matter how hard you try? Well, that happened to me then.

I tried a few more times with no success. So I fiddled around for like 5 more minutes and tried again. Somehow, I got the words out.

And it wasn’t like some amazing aha! moment. But it wasn’t nothing, either. It was incredibly overwhelming. Maybe like looking at yourself in the mirror and saying I like who I am. (I’ve never really needed to do that, but it seems like a thing people do in movies or whatever.)

So I got to work on the passage, always declaring my intentions aloud before working on anything. And you know what?

It was slow. It was challenging. But it was also fascinating. I focused like I never had before. I made baby-step goals. I did this for about two hours until my chamber coaching.

I don’t think I’ve practiced two hours straight in a long time. Well, not a focused two hours.

And I finally know why. After months, years maybe, of agonizing over why it’s so hard for me to focus and practice, I realized it. I didn’t believe I could do it. So what was the point? Sure, I’d go through the motions and hope something good would come out of my instrument. But it was just hope, not based in reality. Not to say that hope is a bad thing. But I think blind hope is. Somewhere along the way, I had lost all faith in myself. And looking back, so many things make sense.

Something my teacher has told me several times is that I play much better in quartet than I do in my solo pieces. And I finally realized why that is. When you are with others that believe in you, it can lift you up enough to get going. Couple that with the pressure to get it right because you’re in a group and you’ve got the recipe for success: belief that you can do it with the will and obligation to perform successfully.

But faith from others can’t last forever. And when I’m out of the situation it’s back to plain ol’ me.

This semester I’ve been trying to figure out what’s wrong. Trying to explain my apathy and depression. Now I realize, of course I’ve been depressed! How could I be in a field in which I don’t even believe I can succeed and not be depressed?

I had another good practice session tonight. And you know what? My recital isn’t going to be perfect. But I’m also not stressing as much. Somehow all of this has helped me live in the moment. Focus on what I’m doing now. Small goals.

With an eye on the prize, you only have one eye on the task at hand.

So what I learned today is this: success takes strength of will. Strength of will takes faith. You can’t really do it until you believe you can do it. But doubters like me see the obvious paradox.

Do I know where I’ll go from here? No. Do I know how my recital/life will go? No. but I do understand something now that I never did before. And that is a leap of faith.

Getting out of the rut

My room is finally clean. And not fake clean; I actually went through everything and organized and didn't let myself just pile things into crap drawers. I got some new storage pieces but I'm already packed to the brim. But that isn't a problem.....yet.

This rain is killing me. It's not even cool rain, like a tropical storm. It's gloomy drizzle, and it's been non-stop for days. No wonder people are grumpy here.

I think cleaning my room is always a big step to upping my productivity- I mean, it already got me to blog about it!

But seriously, life is much easier when you aren't tip-toeing around your room to avoid crap and when it doesn't take an hour to find anything. Phase two of this rut-getting-out-of will be getting back into a practice routine. And then regular gym-ing. And then starting some projects- learning to read German and familiarizing myself with the standard quartet repertoire that I'll be coaching this summer. Blah.

This month has really flown by. I'm kind of disappointed about that. But maybe I really did need the break. And all I can do now is look forward.

At what point did I become lame?

I've been sitting around the house for two weeks. I have a hard time remembering what day it is. I alternate playing Sims and watching The O.C. My room is a complete mess. All of my clothes are dirty. I can't practice because I hurt my deltoid at an exercise class. Because it actually required moving, and apparently my body was not ok with that.

When did I lose my desire to do things? Is this what getting old is? Or am I just super lazy?

I guess it's a good sign that I have realized how lame I am. And I want to change. Which is a small step. Getting out of a lazy rut is really hard. But I think I can do it. Just now right now.

Blunt?

I have really run out of ways to avoid my paper. So many that I am writing in my blog instead. I know, right? Crazy.

Over the years I've had many people tell me that I'm blunt, that I "tell it like it is," that I'm really honest. They say they like that about me, but it always takes me by surprise. I do an enormous amount of filtering before I say things. If people think I'm honest, even to the point of making people uncomfortable, they should hear what goes on in my mind! Which isn't to say I'm a negative person- I'm really not. I just notice and analyze things. It's how my brain works. I like to think about how things could be improved. I like to think critically about things and people. And I don't have a problem sharing it with people, even if it risks alienation. I don't see the point in agreeing with people to fit in. Why should I have to say I enjoyed a recital that I didn't enjoy? Why should I pretend I like someone? And it's one of those things where people only notice when it's negative, or at least only keep track of those. I very often express appreciation for things, but I guess that isn't controversial, so no one remembers.

It doesn't bother me that people think this, other than I certainly don't like it when I hurt people's feelings. It's hard to find a balance of honesty and tact. But I think a lot of problems could be solved more quickly and with less heartache if people were just honest.

It is interesting that even polite ways of expressing dislike such as "I didn't care for it" or "it's not for me" still make people uncomfortable. Do people really need that validation? If you truly like something, just like it. We shouldn't have to justify it and shouldn't be threatened when others don't agree.

This probably came off as terribly blunt and or mean and or hateful or whatever. But it's how I feel, and I'll stand by it.

Finally!

Sooooo....I've been super lame about not updating. So now I'm working on posting more. Or ever.

I'm super busy with viola stuff. But I suppose it's always that way. I wish I could get into a better practice routine. I always rush through my technique stuff so that I can move on to stuff that I can actually play in my lesson. But I know that has negative long-term effects.

I finally got my Bose stereo! Now I can actually listen to CDs! My computer CD drive rarely works anymore and it sounds really bad anyway, so this is an awesome upgrade.

In other news, my ceiling is leaky, but I don't want to tell my landlord about it until I clean my room because if someone did come over to fix it, they wouldn't be able to walk though the mountains of crap.

I've also had a serious lapse in Weight Watchers. I was so good last semester! Now I just don't have the energy to track my food anymore. I hate the new PointsPlus system that started about 2 months ago. My tracking has been terrible since then. Once financial aid comes in I will be able to buy healthy food again so I'll try and use that as a goal to getting back on track.

Sorry this is probably the most boring post ever.

The importance of being...

Honest and humble.

I've been thinking about this lately, with respect to many areas of life. An easy example is losing weight. There are a million and one excuses people use, such as:

"well, I eat way less than these skinny people so there's nothing I can do."

or

"I could if I wanted to."

or

"I don't have time."

and any number of other "reasons." But there aren't reasons. They are excuses. They are shifting the blame. They are denying a problem. They make you a victim of circumstance.

My excuse, for example, was something along the lines of, "I know how to eat healthy, I just need to do it."

Which is almost true.

Then I realized where step two comes in, which is admitting I can't do it on my own. This is very hard for some people. Admitting that we can't do it on our own doesn't make us bad, stupid, or lazy people. It just makes us people. And people need help sometimes. And luckily, I stumbled across Weight Watchers. Now I have something to help me, and it's working.

I now understand the concept of admitting a problem, and, more importantly, accepting responsibility for that problem. I am the way I am because of choices I have made throughout my life. I didn't choose my circumstances, but I reacted to them in ways that were completely my choice. And now I am who I am, still by the choices I make every day. I think until people accept this, they can't change. Why change if you think your life is controlled by someone or something else?

Then, having the humility to admit we need help. Which is just admitting we aren't perfect, and aren't we taught that humans aren't perfect from day one? This help can come from anyone or anything: a friend, a program, a counselor, God...the possibilities are as endless as you want them to be. Yet we take such pride in being self-reliant, self-sufficient. Why, though? Is any person in this world completely self-reliant? And why should someone want to be? We have the resources at our fingertips. But we just have to ask.



Like our pal Adam here. All he had to do was lift a finger.

Finally.

After weeks of excuses...here I go.

So I'm in Boston. Obviously. Enjoying Boco. Enjoying viola. Today was an especially good viola day because I got new strings, which are helping a lot with response and articulation, which has been pissing me off lately (cause my strings were old...)

I love my apartment. I have a really big room with wood floors which is nice for practicing. Luckily I can do almost all of my practicing at home. I really hate practicing at school. First of all, finding a free room can be a challenge. I don't feel like it's private cause there are little windows that people always look in. Also, I somehow always end up next to a musical theater singer which is never fun.

In other news, I started Weight Watchers 5 weeks ago and have since lost 10 pounds. Woo hoo! It's actually a really easy program for me, just monitoring how much food I eat. Probably all of the walking I do here helps too.

It's pretty interesting to see the season change here. It's not that different from Tallahassee except that it is happening now and not in December.

I'm starting to make some friends, but I don't really hang out much. I'm fine with that. I have a competition this Sunday so maybe after that I'll have more time.

Well, there you go. I'll try to update with things of substance from now on.