The Life of A mentally Ill Musician- Day 3

I should have known my day was going to be good when I was able to catch the end of Stray Kid’s MAMA performance (which by the way I highly recommend watching, I mean did you see that stage??! AH-MAZING. Seriously, go watch it then come back, thank me later). After that I was headed to my 8am music research and bibliography class….it’s as boring as it sounds (so sorry to my teachers, they’re great, it’s just the class). Afterwards I head to a different campus to teach biology. As I’m settling into the TA lounge, the lab managers tell me that while I can’t see the comments my students gave me on the TA evaluations, they did go through and rank us in order of most liked among their students. And I was at the top. So my 80- something students really liked me :). They’re pretty cool too and I wasn’t really expecting me to be at the top, but I guess I knew that they liked me because they constantly tell me so. So that brightened my day up A LOT…I’m going to have to buy them some candy or bake some cookies for our last (short) class next week. That class went fine and then I had my “office hour” of grading and shredding papers.

After my office hours is typically when I’ll practice, and today was no different. It wasn’t too bad either and I got some stuff done. I also sight read for some fun, yes I think sight reading is fun. It helped my lack of motivation from yesterday.

Then we have our flute studio class! I didn’t have to perform today (I get to go Thursday), so I was just able to watch some flute peers play. I tried really hard this time to not compare myself to them and I think I kinda did that because I was actually motivated after (though I went straight home after class). They all played beautifully as usual. Some played their pieces by memory for the first time, and with it being the first, there were some memory blips. If I’m being straight up honest, I was happy to hear and see that because it meant I wasn’t alone on my struggle bus of memorization which basically made me feel better about our last studio recital where I played from memory and had a decent sized memory blip. It freaked me out, especially because I haven’t memorized many pieces, let alone perform it in front of an audience. But hearing their blips made me realize that mine may not have been that bad (not because I’m any better by any means, the blips just didn’t effect my peer’s playing much so I assume mine also wasn’t as bad as it seemed in the moment). I also haven’t listened to the recording of the recital (sorry professor) because I honestly felt SO BAD about it after, but after hearing them, I think I might be able to stand it. It sounds weird to say I was happy to see my peer’s struggle, but I was. It reminds me that everyone is human and there’s going to be memory blips when playing a piece from memory, the important thing is it doesn’t take away from the piece. It was comforting and a bit inspiring to watch them have a blip and then keep their focus and just keep playing. Either way, they sounded great and it was a nice class that motivated me. Though my good mood could have just been from my bio students lol.

Once home and settled, I decided to work on some compositions for a while since I had no grading to do. I really want to write a piece for my recital next semester, but I really struggle with liking my own work. I’ll vibe with it for a week or so, then take a break and come back to it and think it sucks. Or I’ll come back and still have no ideas on where to go next in the piece. I don’t even know how to help that haha. Right now I have 2 very different things going on and I can’t decide which is better, or again, if they’re both trash. This first one I started on, I decided I hated a few days later…but that’s what I worked on today so who knows anymore. I’ll put what I have now on this piece for kicks and giggles, there’s no flute part yet and it’s kinda weird. Again, it’s not done so don’t be too harsh, I’m just starting!