The Life of a Mentally Ill Musician- Day 2

Ah back in Morgantown West Virginia….honestly not my favorite place I’ve lived, but school here is good. It was a bit unusual for me today walking into the music building feeling some anxiety. I suppose it makes sense as I had a whole week of hanging out with my family and a close friend. Or it even could have came from the outfit I wore today, as not many people here in West Virginia would dress anything like this (though I did find out my sibling dressed in basically the same outfit miles away from me teehee). But I was more on edge today, regardless, I made my way down to the dungeon (practice rooms with no windows ew (at least the pink stands make it better)).

Anyways… practice was okay today. I knew I wanted to ease back into playing after a week off and figured I wouldn’t want to practice for as long as normal, but I didn’t expect to feel so tired after just an hour! I’m not sure if it’s because of the break or just my mental health today. I was feeling super unmotivated though, which makes practicing real tough, which I don’t like doing because I want to enjoy my practice and not make it feel forced. So today involved adding in more breaks to try to avoid a hellish practice session. It definitely helped and I pushed through and practiced as much as I planned on, but I still was pretty unmotivated overall.

I struggle a lot of times comparing myself to others, big surprise, but it can make me unmotivated. I hear and see all of these great musicians around me and wonder what in the world I’m doing standing next to them. Because I’m just me. It leaves me wanting to just put down my flute for good, but I couldn’t do that to myself, I’d get too sad. So I try to move my thoughts elsewhere, to myself and my own progress. Sure, I’m no where near as good as the great flute players, but I’ve improved a lot. Plus they’ve been playing a whole lot longer. It helps a bit with my motivation to continue. I guess my lack of motivation could also be from my depression, ugh. Or it could even be because my brain is still in “break mode”. Either way, I got some good work done and pushed through with some extra break time.

Since no one probably knows my schedule, usually on MWF, I am up and going at 8am to practice for a few hours before my graduate theory class at 11. So I did that (though I slept in some today) and usually I’d be headed to a different campus for my biology prep class, where I’m taught the material I’ll teach my students the next week. But that finished up the week before break, so I had an early day today, allowing me to run to Kroger and get some essentials. Then I napped… :D, put some grades in the grade-book, and took notes on the last lesson I had with my professor. That helped my motivation some surprisingly, being able to hear changes in that lesson as well as how I sounded and practiced today. The rest of my night I spent watching Wednesday (super good show btw), which made me excited because usually I have too much to do and just go to sleep after I’m done with everything school related.

And that about wraps today up. I’m going strong with a whole 2 days in a row of blogging, hopefully it’ll last longer. It was a pretty typical day, though I was more unmotivated, but I persevered! (or whatever)