The last two days have been pretty normal. Tuesday I had my classes, both of which were good. I’m definitely excited for studio class this semester as were going to be working on our social media presence, which I have been wanting to work on more. I don’t know who or what possessed me yesterday as well, but I ended up finishing a song for flute and electronics. Now, I’m really good at thinking everything I do is mediocre, and this isn’t really any different. It’s done and it’s there and now I need to decide if I’m going to play it on my recital, which sounds scary. I’ll probably force a few flute friends to listen before deciding 🙂 . Today was also normal, practicing and going to band rehearsal. I am playing one of our concerts entirely on piccolo, which I haven’t done in a hot minute so I’m usually really exhausted after band.
As for practicing, I’ve actually done alright the past few days. My motivation isn’t that much higher, but I pushed myself. I think I also set more realistic expectations for myself at this moment. Forcing myself to practice more isn’t going to help. Right now, planning and making a goal of practicing for 3+ hours a day, isn’t possible. Setting that goal there is too high right now, even if I may need the practice, I know I won’t be able to get myself to do it and then I’ll go down a rabbit hole of anxiety and depression. So for this week, I planned on practicing a bit less, which is more realistic with how I’m feeling. Maybe next week I’ll be practicing a lot more, but for this week, I won’t. I do think that is helping with the ways I’ve been feeling as well. Looking at a planner everyday and seeing that I didn’t do what I planned on and expected from myself wasn’t great. But for the past two days I’ve looked and been happy that I did as planned. I think it’s important to give ourselves grace, but not so much grace that we do nothing. So for practicing, I’m giving myself some grace this week because of my lack of motivation and mood because I need it, and I deserve it. But I’m not giving myself too much grace by not practicing at all, I’m still pushing myself. So, be sure to give yourself some grace when you need it, because we all deserve it. Again, some weeks you may need to give yourself more grace than other weeks.
It’s a hard balance to keep and is something I definitely need to work on. Some days I’m stressed and anxious because I don’t have much time until my recital and my recital hearing, so I need to practice more and get things done. But being in a room for 4 hours and drilling music doesn’t work for me and will leave me very depressed. I’m still working hard on my music and practicing. I just need a slight break this week. Maybe I’ll be ready and motivated for more practice next week. As for practice content, I’ve been working on memory and pieces with electronics a lot, on top of Chant de Linos. This week I’m working on memorizing a Tchaikovsky piece I worked on last semester, and so far it’s going well. It’s only 2 pages and I mostly have a page and a half in my brain. For electronics, the pieces always seem easy until you add in the backing track. So I’ve just been working on lining things up since I know it takes more time than someone would expect. Maybe I’ll write a bit Friday on my process of learning a piece with electronics, because I definitely didn’t know where to start with it with the first piece I did with electronics and would have loved some help. Then there’s Chant de Linos which is a whole other ballpark of fun. But I think I’m making good progress on it. I also ran through the piece I wrote today to see if it all works.
I think that’s about all I have for now. I’ve definitely been feeling better these past two days (which could also really be due to the increased dose in my medication), my motivation isn’t buried beneath the ground anymore and I am trying to be nicer to myself. Now for the rest of my night, I will be watching K-dramas because embarrassingly enough, I really have been liking them even with their cheesy romantic parts.
by juniparker
