In Which I Am Alive

When I was in ninth grade, I spent biology class goofing off in the back of the room with a table of all guys. These kids were some of my great friends and biology was full of excellent times dissecting pigs, telling jokes, and listening to the guys talk about the beautiful girls that made their lives miserable (ah, junior high...). One day they made an anti-girl club called "Chica de las Muertas" and they let me be an honorary member since, in Aaron's words, "You're practically a guy when you hang out with us." I'm not going to make this an analysis of my relative girliness or manliness, I'm quite comfortable with being a girl. However, I have a lot of experience being "one of the guys," and I love it. Historically, I've found it easier to establish and maintain friendships with guys than with girls. I tend to be less intimidated by guys. Since coming to college and living with roommates I've gotten much better at building wond...

It's like a romantic comedy: girl meets boy, girl hates boy, girl gets to know boy better and falls deeply in love. Take out "boy" and add "numerous long-dead classical composers" and you've got my college music career in a nutshell. That's right folks. I never thought I'd say it, but over the last couple of semesters, I've fallen deeply in love with three dead dudes: J.S. Bach, Joseph Haydn, and W.A. Mozart.  For years, I maintained that Bach was too complicated and calculated for me to enjoy. To all you classical music aficionados, I can only say, "I was young! I was ignorant! I had only ever played Bach Inventions, and a little bit from the Well-Tempered Klavier!" However, last year, I was introduced to (aka forced to learn) an incredible keyboard Toccata and...wow...just...wow. Shortly thereafter I discovered Bach's more awesome organ works, and just last month became enamored of his Mass in B Minor. Powerful stuff. And stud...

Sometimes I desperately need to create a lesson plan, write in my work blog, and study for my music history test... And instead I spend an hour and half reading online essays about comic strips.... And yet somehow, I don't really regret it.

You know you're secretly only seven years old when you go to a career fair and cruise right on past the booths for Goldman Sachs, Apple, and various other fancy, prestigious companies without giving them a second look, pick up applications for a summer camp and Disneyland, and then leave. Grown-up jobs just sound so boring  to me. So it's probably a good thing I'm planning to work in elementary schools for the rest of my life. And yet, despite my aversion to grown-up jobs...I finally have one. A job where I go to an office and send emails and make copies (any job that uses a copy machine is a grown-up job by default). And...it's not really that bad. It kind of makes me feel like I'm a real adult now...and then I go to my other job, where I draw pictures with fourth graders. And I finally feel at home.

World, today I practiced piano for an hour. I mean, really practiced. Metronome, exercise book, scales, the real deal. And I made some serious progress on the Schubert piece that I've been wanting to perfect. Serious enough that I might  might have it ready in time for Grand Pianos Live. (So ya know, if you want to come see me or anything...) It felt...so good. Seriously. Not just to be at the piano again, not just to feel like I was making quality music, but to know that I was making music on my own terms. That I wasn't doing it for a grade, that I wasn't preparing for juries or a recital or a nervewracking lesson the next day. I was just playing because I wanted to play. Because I missed Schubert. Because I love the feeling of drilling a phrase over and over again, until you've got the dynamics and the phrasing and the balance and the expression absolutely perfect, and then you can move on to the next phrase and make it just as perfect. Knowing I could stop any ti...

Someday, when I am rich (or at least...out of paycheck-to-paycheck range), I will: Eat things besides pasta and granola bars. Have my own room again. Go snowboarding every weekend (and even some weekdays, since I could afford to miss work) Go rock climbing on days besides "Bring a Friend Friday" (where I can get in for free, because I have friends with season passes). Buy all of the music I ever loved. And all of the books ever written, even ones I don't love. Have a car. Own my own camping gear. Travel. A lot. Things that I do now, instead of being rich: Get really creative with my food sources, so I can eat things besides pasta and granola bars. These include: attending social/church functions just because there will be free food, try to date as much as possible, and go to my grandparents' house for every Sunday dinner possible. Bond with the two other girls who share my room, and pretend I'm a pirate when I climb up the ladder to my little bunk. (...

I've realized something; I blog less when things are good. Not necessarily because most of my blogging is complaining; I think I've written some surprisingly upbeat posts when depressed. However, I think for me, writing serves two main purposes: channeling emotions and escaping them, with the occasional celebratory moment. So I'm gonna switch things up a little and blog on a happy day: I'm in a new apartment, in my old ward. I miss living with my family, having my dad's office in the next room over, playing with my sisters, wrestling with my brother, and following my mom around the house. I miss my amazingly soft bed with its scads of pillows, which I've now traded for a top bunk that feels like a pile of bricks. But I love being back in my second home, right by campus. I feel like my old friends and neighbors have given me such a warm welcome back. I love that I'm right by JDawgs, Spoon it Up, Awful Waffle, and Slab. I'm a huge fan of my classes thi...