I’ve been learning to play the piano for about seven years. I started at the same time as my elder daughter  (who is vastly more talented than me!), which happened to coincide with my son starting Kindergarten, which freed up the time to let me go to lessons.

My piano teacher is charming, good-natured and has the patience of a saint – and I love my lessons. He never tells me off or makes me feel bad about not having practiced enough and we laugh a lot.

But I always have a bit of a guilty conscience. Every week I set out to practice at least 20 minutes a day. And it NEVER, EVER happens. I really don’t know why. I’ve tried practicing as soon as the children go out in the morning, after lunch and everything in between. I know that a regular time would be good – a set routine. But I just never manage it.

And to be honest with you, I just don’t understand why. I’m generally a very disciplined person – you have to be to work from home. I have no trouble at all sitting down to blog every day. And I actually enjoy playing the piano – I love being able to make some progress and feeling like I’m improving.

For  a while I’ve been stuck on a bit of a plateau and it always takes me quite a while to master new pieces, which is sometimes a little frustrating – but even I can see that the remedy to this is to up the practice. But it just doesn’t happen.

I’ve been lying in bed with a horrible virus for the last couple of days and pondering such things. I think the piano situation is right there alongside all my New Year’s Resolutions which get hauled out and dusted off every year, and then not followed up on. It’s like writing every day – on my novel, remember?, or training for a marathon, or losing the extra 10kg.

And yet these are all things which I clearly want – or I wouldn’t keep putting them back on the list every year – and which I actually could do something about. Each of them is eminently do-able (well writing a novel yes, getting it published, perhaps a little trickier), and yet something always seems to block me from starting. They are all things which would require a little regular daily effort and if I’m honest I could find the time for all of them. I’ve said a zillion times that I’m going to really give these things a go – they are all things I really want to do.

So what stops me?

I wish I knew. (Answers on a postcard gratefully received! You could change my life!!)

Helen

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 3rd, 2011 at 10:23 am and is filed under Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.