So far have accumulated 1 hr. 30 min. of piano practice time. I'm doing OK, I guess, progress-wise, but I'm going to have to work very hard to fight down the demon of perfectionism that makes me go, "I can't play this piece perfectly even after working on it for a while. I guess I am not worthy of owning a piano."

I'm hoping I will get more than one week on some of the pieces. I really do not remember how fast one was expected to advance from my earlier days of piano lessons. I feel like I'm not advancing fast enough. We'll see what the teacher says on Tuesday.

I also need to work harder on the left-hand stuff, even though the right hand is generally the one that gets the interesting bits. My left hand is weak and I tend to get my first three fingers tangled up when doing scales.

I will say, though, that I do relax considerably sitting down at the piano. I guess it is because I know that I have to concentrate on THIS and ONLY THIS and that no one can interrupt me (working alone in an empty church parlor helps; I may take to unplugging the phone at home when I start practicing there).


One of my big problems at work, I've come to realize, is that I anticipate interruption. And thus, I can never concentrate on things to the extent I'd like - going in on weekends works a lot better because a lot of the time I'm alone, I feel like I can keep my office door closed, and the phone usually does not ring.

I need to learn to be more protective of my time.

Also about the piano - I like that the teacher gave me a couple of "ice cream" pieces (or I think of them as such - I save them for when I'm done with the scales and other exercises). One is a very simplified Mozart piece. They call it "German Dance." I recognize it as a theme from (I think) one of his symphonies, but I don't remember the exact source. It's the one that goes BA-dum, BA-dum, ba-dum-dum-dum-dum dum-dum and then there's a run of eighth notes....I can sing it in my head and I recognize it but it bugs me a little that I can't remember the exact source.

But hey, I'm playing Mozart. Even if in highly-arranged form. And that's enough of a carrot to keep me driving over to the church and sitting in the chilly parlor and running through endless renditions of "Running for the Taxi" and "Passing a French Bakery" and "At the Art Museum" and "The Eiffel Tower" (And yes, those are the names of all four of the little finger-exercise pieces I have for this week. When I get bored I try playing them off tempo a bit - syncopated, or trying to force the thing into waltz time. Or making up chording for it instead of playing the left-hand stuff as written. I'm a little afraid of doing it too much and learning them "wrong," though).

The two hardest things to over come for me right now are that there are specific fingering patterns - there's a particular finger that is supposed to play a particular key, it's not just holding your hands any old way and hoping you hit the notes right, and also just the fact that it's an unfamiliar thing to be doing with my hands and I still make a lot of mistakes. And I have to fight twin impulses when I make mistakes: the impulse to give up, and conversely, the impulse to force myself to keep doing it until I get it PERFECT. Because there's a point at which tiredness creeps in and you can't get it PERFECT, I think.