teeter-totter

Music was his life, it was not his livelyhood...



I have found myself realizing recently that I have been dragging myself down the wrong path through the dark forest of higher education. For three years now I have been struggling to be a music major--practicing, studying, and playing for three years trying desperately how to express myself through music and playing catch up with those who already can. I realized that I already know to express myself through writing, and I've been denying my ability because music was the "right path for me". When all of this became clear to me, and that music isn't the path I should be seriously persuing, I realized that I knew this a long time ago.

I have been writing almost as long as I've been playing music, and even when I grew tired of playing music, I still found solace in writing. Writing gives me a chance to clearly express my thoughts, my ideas, my feelings so that when I tell other people about them, I hear them say "yes". Yes is a powerful word. When I wrote for the bee, I would recieve almost weekly-praises about my articles--people loved reading my articles and I loved writing them. When I played trombone the most common response was "not bad, but..." When I play, I rarely here a genuine "yes."
In this recent internal sojourn down the path of what-do-I-want-to-be-when-I-grow-up I realized that my problem has always lied in the decision making process--the choice of what we do with our lives doesn't come from the path of least-resistance. It comes from the path of most-praises; both personal praises and praises from other people.

...it made him feel so happy, and it made him feel so good...


This decision wasn't easy. My dad is a musician, my mom is a musician, my sister is a musician, my grandmother was a musician, all of my friends are musicians. Music has been my life, literally, since the day I was born. Since I can remember I've always known that I would be some sort of musician, even through the constant search for which is the right career for me (you know the routine, astronaut, fireman, police officer, member of the X-men, the usual) I knew music would someone be in there. It was logical for me to simply go with music, but there lies the problem. There is a fine line between passion and career, and the problem with all passion is that soaring highs can easily turn into desperate lows. I was working so hard at playing music that it stopped being fun, I began to forget why I wanted to be a music major, and slowly but surely it became clear that I, in fact, didn't. I love music, I absolutely love music, I love music so much that if I keep trying to be a music major I'm going to wind up jaded towards it and I will lose the passion I already have--I can't bear for that to happen.

Sometimes the only thing that tells us if we're redy for the plunge, it to go ahead and take it. Sometimes we find out it's not the right one. The trick is getting off the path and starting over before you get too far down the line. The more I think about it, the more I dwell on it, the more I (heh) write about it; the more I realize that writing is where I feel at home.


...and he did not know how well he sang, it just made him home...





(thank you, Harry Chapin--for everything)