Back in to the swing of a normal life....

July 2010 was the last time I blogged. Seriously? I suppose it has been that long. My life has been a little busy since then.

July 2010... It is difficult to think back to what I was doing in July. Let's see... OH yes, I was right in the middle of working with the kids at Energy Express. At the time, I was really upset that it was going to be my last term working with them, but I recently found out that I can work with them again this summer. Now I am excited to get to work with the kids that I have started to become familiar with.

August. Back to school. Back to piano. I took about 2 months away from piano so I could recover from tendonitis that had been bothering me off and on since high school. That worked, but picking up my piano chops again took a while. Oh yeah, at this point, I was still working on learning music for that "little" thing everyone refers to as a "senior recital". My relationship with Adam was going great, and we were able to spend more time with each other now that I was back in the area.

So, here I was, emmersed in school. My biggest mistake was enrolling in Biology and English on top of 2 music methods courses, ensembles, and a senior recital. For once, I studied subjects outside of music as much as I studied for music classes. At this point, all of my doubts about majoring in music were quenched. I would sit in those general studies and count down the minutes so that I could hurry down the steps to the Fine Arts building.

September/October. Glenville State scheduled 7 home football games, which meant that basically EVERY weekend, I had a game. This was my last season of marching band, and probably the best. I played trumpet, which was a huge challenge, but I held my own. In the meantime, I watched the director's two older kids while his wife was in the hospital having their 3rd child. I believe I made it home once for those two months. We ended the season as the exhibition band at the Tournament of Bands regionals at Lewis County. I'll miss being on the student side of the sideline for marching band.The recital was getting closer. At one point, I almost gave up hope on the Debussy. I could barely play it with the music, and I was expected to have it memorized by December 10th.

November. On the 4th, I made my final draft for the piece I composed. A week later, my boyfriend dumped me for no reason whatsoever. I lost quite a bit of sleep over this, and I am still trying to figure out what happened. Most everything else was going well with the recital. It was my only real way to escape from that terrible heartbreak. I was practicing 4-5 hours a day for most of the week, and 1-2 on days I would spend with friends. This was a very difficult time. I couldn't get home because of weekend events with the department, and my friends (as well as a faculty member or two) were most of what kept me sane. The Debussy was almost memorized (along with everything else), posters were put up all over campus, programs were printed, and I bought my dress over Thanksgiving break.

December. Ah. The last week of classes. AHHH!!! My recital was Friday of the last week of classes! My dress rehearsal went well. I was a nervous wreck all week, and was completely distracted from classes. At some point, I used some skips. I basically had to force-feed myself because I had no appetite. In the meantime, juries and proficiencies for everyone else was really stressful, so upon walking into the Fine Arts building that week, a person could feel the tension building up. My parents came in early that Friday so they could set up for my reception.

5:00 came around. I was all dolled up and ready to go. I think I was ready to go. There's something different about the nervous feeling of a senior recital compared to the nervous feeling I would get for student recitals. With a student recital, you are nervous, but you realize that the piece is soon to end and you'll be fine. With a senior recital, you are nervous the same, but even though you know that the piece you are currently playing is almost finished, your mind is already set on being nervous for the next piece. Standing back stage and getting ready to walk out was like standing on a high dive. Once you jump, you can't go back, and when you hit the water, your only two options are to painfully smack the water, or maneuver your body in such a way that you enter the water in a graceful olympic fashion.

Here I was, jumping off of a horizontal, black high dive, to 45 minutes of music that I would either sink or swim with. I suppose I swallowed a little water on the first two pieces, and had a sense of "drowning" at some point, but I managed to make it through all of my pieces fairly well. I had one brainfreeze moment, and there was that time I improvised on the last 10 measures, and the repeat of one section of a piece because I couldn't remember what came next, but all-in-all I was satisfied. When I watched the video, I decided that there were only a few mistakes that a person would notice if they were not familiar with the music. By the end, the premiere of my piece went well, and the feeling of relief that came over me was overwhelming.

For the next few days, I was certain that I would need to see a psychiatrist or therapist of some sort. I literally couldn't sleep. I would sit and reminisce on everything that happened with the recital and how my life as a performer was basically over because I'm an education major. I had time to think about everything, and the breakup with Adam finally surfaced. I woke up one morning and printed off a huge amount of piano music. I finally had time to learn music that I picked. So...I picked out Grieg's "The Butterfly".