What is IT?

Soooo..I don't know what planet I was living on for the past...it doesn't matter how long because it's shameful and embarrassing...but I was not practicing. I haven't had a serious practice schedule, routine, or whatever since my organ recital...so like a year almost...

IDK who I thought I was or what I thought I had gotten myself into...I'd been writing and performing a lot more which was cool...felt more like an artist blah blah blah but I had somehow convinced myself that playing was only something I wanted to do for fun and for some reason that translated into "you don't have to practice since you don't seriously want to be a player anyway"....

that is dumb...i've had a complex about playing piano probably since i've been playing well...let's just say since '05...when I went to the Oberlin Piano Festival and this man told me "some people have it and some people just don't"...even though I got angry and said that he didn't know what he was talking about..i really honestly believe that that stuck with me for a reason and while i feel like he was an idiot for saying that, I actually took it to heart...

Believing that some people have"it" and some don't have "it" just eliminates the idea that people have to work toward being good at something. While I believe people are given natural gifts and talents and abilities and what not...that only accounts for a small percentage of their "having IT".  So what is IT....are you doomed from the beginning of your existence if God just decided not to give you IT or does everybody just have an IT and it is your responsibility to mine out all of the IT that God has put inside of you.

I'm choosing to believe that we all have some genius in us...If I believe that I'm made in the image of God of course i have IT...the question is what will I do with it.

Anywho, my practice break is now over...this practicing really slowly and focused and deliberately thing with a specific goal in mind is at the the same time wonderful and horrible...it is difficult to focus my mind and too actually play this stuff slow enough for me to seriously think about it. I have the urge to play it fast but I won't...I won't play this piece (a piece that I wrote by the way so one would think that I would know how to play it but that is not always a given, plenty of people write things that they can't perform...Hell, composers right for all sorts of instruments, its ignorant to think that I should be a phenomenal performer of a work just because I came up with it.) fast until Sunday. For now I will play it RIDICULOUSLY SLOW and I WILL LOVE IT even though I HATE IT.

The other thing I realized is that practicing music and writing and just the whole experience of music, especially when alone, is about discovery and exploration. Its not about finding correct answers, its about finding what you think sounds good.

Love this journey. Now that I've actually accepted that I'm actually gonna be on it for real this time. Glad i woke up...now I gotta stay woke.