Reflection 2

I'll tell you this: self-teaching myself the violin is not easy. This is possibly due to my lack of shoulder stand (thus taking away my comfort when holding the violin itself), or my strong doubts that I'm really not holding the bow how the lady told me to in the video, or because, to keep good posture, I have to stand up every single time I practice. Like with everything, I kind of just want this learning process to all be flawless, simple, and, again, very easy. But it's not. Most of the time, I get frustrated with hearing the ever-so-familiar squeak of the bow against the A-string, or the cramp I get from keeping my left arm up for long periods of time. Just as I started to resent choosing this topic to spend 20% of my work time on, an incident this week made me lose all my regrets and resentfulness. 

After school this past Friday, to relieve myself from the stress of SATs of that-coming Saturday, I went to visit my cousins. However, my phone died, and I stuck to spontaneously driving to their house without any notice. As lucky as I usually am (I'm terribly unlucky), it was to my surprise that every single one of my cousins was out on a play date, and I was welcomed into their home to use their laptop until at least one of them returned from their social adventures. Approximately 50 minutes later, after a short nap, the loveliest little toddler, Venice (two years old), waddled in with her little pink Crocs with a huge smile on her face. While I spent the next couple of minutes getting nauseous due to Ring around the Rosie, a sudden realization sparked in my brain: "I left my violin in the car." I rushed outside grabbing the case, displaying to my now multiple-aunts-and-uncles a violin along with a brief explanation of the Twenty Percent Time Project. I started off by playing the introductory song that I have spoken about already so many times, "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star." Although I felt terribly unimpressive, it was very much so impressive to the little Venice, who recognized her favorite song being played by her older cousin. Squeaks and pauses dominated the song, but she did not seem to care because her little vocal chords screamed, "How I wonder what you are!" just as I played the notes G, G, F, F, E, E. Her amazement continued afterwards as she begged me to play it again. Her performance was positive motivation to keep with my studies of the violin, and it definitely was the cutest thing I saw all week.