Let me set the scene for this blog post: I'm the kind of person who has one million hobbies and rotates through them one after another. When I get bored of one, I move on to the next of my hobbies, until the cycle repeats. (My dad has this same problem of rotating through hobbies--that's where I get it from). For me, playing the violin was one of the hobbies in the rotation, but after a few rounds, it has, hopefully, been permanently removed.
Today I was reading through one of my dad's old blog posts (one of his various hobbies that slowly faded out of existence) where he wrote about how he was nervous for me to start my very first violin lesson. He said he was nervous for several reasons:
First, because with all the anticipation, excitement, and the self-predictions I had of future greatness, it was inevitable that the actual lesson would fall just a tad short of my high expectations.
And, secondly, in his own words, "I was worried that she would just plain suck. It's not like I wish to live through her, forcing her to endure years of lessons while cracking the proverbial whip over her head, and in the end making her hate the instrument, just so that I can get some self-fulfillment...No, it's not like that...The reason I say it will be hard to endure if she is terrible is that I don't know how long I could put up with listening to those awful screeching noises that happen when Zoe misses a note."
He was right, I admit, I was bad. However, I loved it. But, like all my hobbies, it was just a phase and I ended up getting bored of it and never practicing. So, I stopped taking lessons.
Nine years later playing violin came up in the hobby rotation and I was back in the game; but this time my dad said if I wanted to start up again, I would have to play in the garage. He had already endured the first round and didn't want to go through it a second time.
And what do you know, my mom and I went to a book sale later that year, and there, sitting on one of the tables, was a violin! I grabbed it, showed it to my mom who looked at me skeptically, and said "Are you sure you want to play violin again?" Despite her doubts, she got it for me, and I went home that evening happy because of the violin under my arm.
I played that violin a lot and loved it as much as I did the first one. But my Mom was right and, as we like to say in my family, inevitably I “went out of the phase, again.” While it lasted, I played it faithfully (out of earshot, so that everyone in the house wouldn't have to stuff their ears with cotton balls), but this time, I believe it has been permanantly deleted from the rotation.
Thanks for reading!
ZL
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