Not Quite My Tempo
Monday, November 19th, 2024
So for this one, I’m actually gonna take a step back from the whole woodworking/music/Chicago-transplant thing the previous blogs have been and just throw a few thoughts at you. If you’ve ever wondered what the inside of my mind looks like, it’s this: a bunch of semi-connected, somewhat cohesive, ADHD riddled thoughts. Good luck.
We took a bike ride at work a couple weeks ago, and the last couple hundred feet of the route, we encountered this mural one the side of a building:
I’ve always wondered when platitudes like this come up: if it didn’t really matter, why are there so many reminders that it doesn’t matter? Why do so many people need reassurance that they’re doing life right? Why, when I was graduating high school, did hank Green post this video to the Class of 2017, telling us not to worry if we don’t have it all figured out… Why do so many people need a reminder that it’s not too late?
Social Media? Schmocial Schmedia.
I don’t post often on Instagram. I feel like I can’t “compete” with my friends and peers who seemingly have their lives together: people are getting married, having kids, in relationships, in higher paying and fulfilling jobs, traveling the world… and I’m the artist living paycheck to paycheck still trying to figure out what it is exactly I’m supposed to be doing. Don’t get me wrong, I’m totally content with what I’m doing now. Eh, actually, typing that didn’t even feel right. I’m mostly content with what I’ve got going on. I just wish I were further along. 10 years ago, I would’ve thought I’d be in my fourth year of teaching high school orchestra by now, gigging every weekend, constantly writing/arranging music. You know, the whole success thing that 4 year colleges definitely promise and guarantee to every student. Somehow, I got it into my head that I need to be a triumvirate: a great teacher, performer, and writer. Whatever, the plan changed, now I want to be a luthier, a black luthier, focus on community and giving back and all that jazz. A luthier, a performer, and some secret third thing I still haven’t quite worked out.
64201
I still constantly think about so many of the kids I’ve helped pick out their first instrument or rent a violin for the first time. The little hispanic girl who came into the shop every month to show me what she learned on her guitar; the little black boy with an afro I said looks like Noel Pointer’s, and he came back a few weeks later having listened to every Noel Pointer album he could stream or find on YouTube; the teenager who had trouble finding a teacher for their autistic sibling. I’m seeing some of them go through Sphinx and TDP and become great performers; I still want to be there for these people and also be good at what I do. Imagine my surprise to hear my thoughts repeated back to me on Dimension 20:
The Dice Tell Their Story
Aaaaand that’s why I love games. And stories, media, movies, the whole thing. It’s why I was so attracted to music at a young age: the ability to express something that would otherwise be either unexpressed or forgotten. It’s a comfort to know that at least one other person has the same thing going on in their brain, even if it was expressed through their fictional player character on a D&D actual play show. There’s so much I want to do, yet so little time on this earth in which to do it. Life is hard. Adulting is hard, but at least…oh wait there’s another Dropout clip that works here:
Cool. That helps a little, but the fact remains: I’m 26. I’m officially in my *shudders* late-twenties. By 30, I want to have accomplished much more, but I’ve spent most of my time just studying…waiting. Waiting to be qualified to do something great. Sure, the pandemic took some of that away in my early twenties...but it did the same for other people, and there they go...
Bit by Boring Bit...
Anyways, there is a conclusion to that first clip from D20:
and that did genuinely help me contextualize my own situation a bit. "Focus on what's in front of you..." Cool. But how, exactly? The thing in front of me, the work I'm doing...it's not that I'm not immediately good at it: I knew I'd be facing a steep learning curve when I enrolled at violin making school. (...Well, okay it is. I've gotta stop starting off sentences like that.) It's also the fact that it's taking me so long to wrap my head around certain things, specifically, fitting a thing into/onto another thing: bass bars, bridges, neck sets, purfling, those were all of my weak spots. The way my brain works, this little things add up and ruin the whole fiddle. "The goal is to finish this violin and make it look good and I am behind schedule." Can you guess where this is going? Did you think I had another video clip from some piece of internet content that perfectly relates to the thoughts I've described above? Because you'd be right. Sorry.
Is this what journaling is? I could never get into journaling, but putting thoughts in html tags is something I could get into for sure.
Coda
So to summarize, not that I said much of anything here, time is funny, I feel like I never have enough of it, and I’m trying to trust and enjoy the process more. If any of that made sense to you, I sincerely apologize. In other news, I glued in my neck recently and am finishing shaping it, so I’ll have another violin construction based blog post for you in about…soon. Just soon. I’m gonna go to Indianapolis for a few days first… 𝄂
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