So I'm walking out of another disastrous piano lesson today, and I get told that I need to practice 2 hours a day if I ever want to pass that conservatory exam. Later, I'm in the music office when I run into the orchestra director, who asks me to give him tempos for the concerti I'm playing with the orchestra in a few weeks (I haven't started to look at the music yet). Not to mention that I'm taking 16 college credits at the moment, many of which aren't that easy. Or that I'm working two jobs.
It's not like the time doesn't exist for all of this--it does. Technically speaking, there are 16 hours in a day in which I am awake; 17 if I push it. 2 hours is nothing compared to that. So why do I have so much problems even finding one hour for practice?
Humans are so inefficient. Might be the most inefficient machine God made. You get one of them to deliver a letter to another office on campus, a good five-minute walk at the most, and they return an hour later. Why?
The obvious answer is that we need rest. We can't work non-stop, then go to sleep, and expect to survive very long, can we? Of course not. But how is it that I find playing piano on my own time a restful hobby, a leisurely activity; and that I find practicing piano so inordinately tiring, when they're exactly the same thing?!
It's got to be psychological. Somehow tricking the brain to believe that going to class is a leisurely activity you're doing for fun somehow makes the whole day easier, and the whole life less stressful. That said, has anyone here managed that? I don't think so!
Surely this whole inefficiency thing is some devilish plot to ruin humanity. Figures. It's just like that famous painting of the devil playing chess against some poor old fellow, beating him in every way possible. It's like chess against a master in that you're always one (or two, or three) moves behind the other player; you spend the entire game discovering the other person's plans well after they've been put into effect.
I can at least take comfort that, in the previously mentioned picture, a chess master looked at the board and managed to beat the devil.
"The Devil finds work for idle hands." (St. Jerome)
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But how is it that I find playing piano on my own time a restful hobby, a leisurely activity; and that I find practicing piano so inordinately tiring, when they're exactly the same thing?!
My how I can relate to that! As soon as all of my obligations are over for the day, or the moment a break starts, I suddenly have boundless energy to accomplish things or do fun things, whereas even when I technically had the time before I found it stressful or tiring. Alas...
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