Playing with my Christmas present

I finally took the time to play my beautiful new Christmas present from my mom. It is so much easier to just sit and watch a movie or climb into bed at 8:30 from exhaustion, but I was determined to tune my new violin and play it tonight. I read 2 book on happiness recently. They are both by Gretchen Rubin if you want to check them out. She has a pretty nice life, but wanted to work on being happy and most importantly realize in her day-to-day life what she has right in front of her. So for a year she read up on happiness and tried all sorts of tactics. This is as close as I get to reading a self-help book. I like it because she's a huge reader and quotes tons of authors I love.One thing she talks about is the different levels of happiness. Sitting to watch a movie can bring you a level of happiness, going on a long-awaited trip can bring another level and then an even higher level are the ones you have to put more work into like mastering an instrument you've always wanted to play, or finally getting the guts to take a fiction writing class, training for a triathlon etc. In her first book she finds her splendid truth to happiness while riding the subway. It is hard to understand if you haven't read her book, but she explains it like this: So my new-and-improved formula for happiness is this: being happier requires you to thinking about feeling good, feeling bad, and feeling right, in an atmosphere of growth

 I'll come back to that splendid truth. The violin took me a while to tune, but it stayed nicely in tune for close to an hour. I've been playing a 3/4 violin for years so playing a full size violin makes such a difference to the tone and well, fullness of the sound. I pretty much raced through Suzuki Book 1. Mom--You would not have approved of my practice tonight. There were more bad notes than good, and I did NOT go back to the beginning to start over.

As a kid I played the violin for 13. Once I hit 12 my amount of practice was minimal, but I kept going 3 more years despite my violin teacher saying "I can tell you didn't practice" every week. Then after a 10 year break I started lessons again when we moved to Minneapolis. It only lasted a year. I think I've only played once or twice since Penelope was born. The amazing thing is in a way the violin fits the "riding the bike" cliche. The brain can sure be a tricky thing. Sure, I'm wobbly and would not play in front of anyone right now, but it is amazing how all that music seems to sitting somewhere in my mind ready to be dusted off and played.  Even after all these years I can look at the first 3 notes of a piece I played over and over as a kid and play the whole thing from memory.At one point tonight I had hit a few wrong notes and was all of a sudden playing a different piece. I couldn't tell you the name of it. I think it is from Book 2.

On a fun note after playing Minuet I and Minuet II by Bach, Penny said "Mommy, you know how to play songs from Little Einsteins? That's so cool!" Thank you Disney Channel for making classical music cool.

I'm not sure where I'm going with the violin. I've thought of trying fiddle music again, or finally becoming good enough at reading sheet music to join an ensemble. (Suzuki teaches little kids to play by ear and then by 5th grade I was too stubborn to learn how to read music since I could hear a song a few times and start playing) Right now I'm not planning anything but to practice what I know. Playing the violin clears my mind in the same way knitting does. I don't think about anything and that's such a nice feeling -- one I've never achieved in yoga or meditation. When I was a kid my mom would always be frustrated how I seemed to be in la-la land when I was playing and how I needed to focus. I'm glad she made me focus then. It was all that practice and focus that allows my mind to disappear into the finger patterns as an adult.

When I think back to Rubin's formula for happiness, playing the violin makes me...
 feel good--it reminds me of childhood
feel bad--this part of the formula gets a little odd because she uses it in multiple ways. You can think of things that make you feel bad, but in the end will be good and help your happiness. Her examples are talking to her parents about their will or taking the time to do a chore you hate. The other context is to find things that help you feel less bad. In this way the violin helps relieve my anxiety that has been pent up for weeks
it feels right  Since I started playing when I was 2, the music feels like a part of me. Cheesy, but my life feels more fulfilling when I play.
in an atmosphere of growth Once I asked my mom if she was disappointed that none of us turned all those activities into a profession. We didn't become professional athletes, end up on Broadway, or Carnegie Hall. She was sad that I felt that way. She wanted to expose us to a ton of experiences...something she never had as a kid. Because she gave me music years ago, I can grow and develop my skill in a way that would be very hard to do if I hadn't been given the groundwork as a kid. And it turns out I really do enjoy practicing.

well, that's all from self-realization Laura for today.