I have been a musician most of my life. I was seven years old when I got started and have not stopped playing ever since. It is one of my greatest passions in life and brings me so much joy. Among the many titles I hold (a writer being one of them!), I have to say that The Musician quickly became my favorite. In fact, I have quickly made The Musician a top priority outside of work these days, and it has led to some absolutely amazing opportunities!
I am first and foremost a pianist. I started taking piano lessons after years of begging my parents. The story of how I started playing is simple. One day, my mother took my sister and me to a toy store (90s kids, anyone?) to make a quick return. We stayed in the play area (remember, this was the early 2000s) where there were various toys to entertain the children, including a small toy piano. When our mother got back, it went a little something like this.
“Mommy, listen!”
“Where did you learn that? Who taught you that?”
“We just figured it out!”
In the ten minutes it took for her to return the toy, my sister and I had sounded out Twinkle Twinkle Little Star on the toy piano. And that is when my mother — not a musician herself — knew it was time for lessons.
My father is a huge classic rock fan and constantly had music going on our house stereo system. And of course, my sister and I practically came out of the womb singing. A few short years later, I got my first guitar and quickly taught myself to play. Another few years down the line, I got my first ukulele and enthusiastically taught myself that instrument too. For our Sweet 16 gift, we received a beautiful upright piano from our parents. Mix that in with about ten musicals in ten years and chorus throughout middle school and high school.
All in all, music has been a consistent force in my life and is large part of the foundation of the woman I am today.
Now, it wasn’t always easy. As any musician can tell you, there was a period of time when the last thing one wants to do was practice for my piano lessons — specifically in the preteen years. It wasn’t because of a lack of passion or talent — in fact, I remember not wanting to practice the classical music my piano teacher gave me. So maybe it was just a lack of discipline. As I was classically trained, I learned so much through playing classical music, but I quickly discovered it was not my passion. Understanding the importance of keeping me playing, my piano teacher leaned into my passion for pop, Christian worship, show tunes, and classic rock. Eventually, I found my groove.
As my journey as a musician continued, I developed Vices. The Vices revolved around an inefficiency in keeping time. Whether it was keeping a consistent tempo or missing beats entirely, this was a constant frustration in my capacity to play — whether it singing or playing an instrument. My first experience playing with other musicians was when I played the simplified bass line in the pit band for the school musical my senior year of high school. It was a great experience overall, and I wish I had started earlier with the pit band.
So, I’ve just displayed the story of my journey as a musician, but I have not yet explained why I love it and have stuck with it after all these years.
As a mechanical engineer by trade, I have learned the importance and necessity of balanced systems. It is up to us engineers to control the inputs in order to understand the outputs. Similarly, musicians are responsible for controlling their talents and inputs so that the music they are playing portrays the intended story, emotions, and thoughts to their listeners. On the surface, most music is logical and systematic in every sense, which keeps the left side of my brain extremely satisfied.
But there is something deeper to music, isn’t there?
How can a single note hold so much weight? How can a simple beat fill a room with an ecstatic energy that makes every person in the room dance? How can eighty-eight keys and six strings tell an infinite number of unique stories? How can a chord break a heart? And how can a different one mend it?
In my current role professionally, I work with sound as an acoustic engineering consultant. Sure, there are explanations and answers to such questions that stem from psycho-acoustics and pertain to frequencies and the science of the human ear. But even as a writer, it is a big challenge to form the words to describe the experience of being moved by a piece of music. Playing a piece myself of music transcends even that!
I mentioned some of my struggles surrounding learning to play growing up, but allow me to delve into the consistent mistakes that I continue to make to this day. The first is rushing. The second is filling in rests. The third is losing count or miscounting.
The Vices all fold into each other to a certain extent.
What I mean by that is that because I easily lose count, I play during the rests to keep the beat. But when the song is written with a rest in it, constantly playing without rests gives a song a completely different sound, which is oftentimes not the intention of the composer. In other scenarios, I tend to rush the beat. I’ll start off a song much slower than intended, knowing that I will speed up subconsciously. This is also not typically the intended way of playing a song. Lastly, I am very guilty of skipping beats altogether. This is probably the worst of The Vices. As I’ve gotten older and started playing with other musicians, forcing myself to keep time correctly has felt like learning from scratch in many ways.
The Vices have always been there. Of course, it bothered me that I could never get my timing quite right. It didn’t make much sense as to why I found it so difficult to keep time. I was a dancer, I mentioned that I was in the school chorus from second to twelfth grade, and I was a waitress. I was certainly not foreign to the notion of teamwork and the art of rhythm. Not to mention, I am a very, very punctual person. It seems as though I should have impeccable timing.
Overall, however, it didn’t seem like a big deal.
It wasn’t until I began to play and sing with other musicians this past year when I realized just how big of a disadvantage The Vices truly were. I became the principle pianist in my band in 2021. Since we exclusively play acoustic music for church, we don’t have a drummer or percussionist. It was up to me to keep us steady.
Soon enough, I was confusing my guitarist, running myself and my lead singer out of breath, and making myself even more frustrated, resulting in noticeable piano mistakes. Ultimately, The Vices caused disunity and disharmony within my band and in turn, a rude awakening and change in my perception of myself as a musician.
And so, I worked (and continue to do so) well beyond my rehearsal time with the band. I can no longer march to the beat of my own drum — I am a part of something bigger. Now that people count on me — literally — I have made it a priority to improve my timing, something I never did for myself in the past. Of course, with the support of my band members, I have improved so much already, and I am so grateful to them!
As I grow older, I realize that marching to the beat of my own drum up until now has been extremely fun. What I like about myself is my independence, sense of adventure, and affinity for a controlled chaos. I love being an adult so much, and I almost never find myself missing being a child. Perhaps it is because I feel that I have an old soul, or that I have a deep sense of duty, or hate being bossed around, or a combination of everything. But I digress.
Marching to my own beat has gotten me this far in life, and I do not regret a single step (or misstep!). My independence has earned me so many blessings and graces in this life. But the past year and a half sharing in the passion of music with others has taught me that maybe it is time to grow up. It is time to face outward because the result of a band in unison is absolutely beyond what I could have imagined compared to playing alone.
My perception of growing up has always been on a linear and sequential scale. I picture myself using blocks to build my life, and just seeing how far I can get. As exciting as the prospect of limitlessness is, it can be a bit lonely building a life of one’s own. Doesn’t it also sound exhausting? I can say that I am pretty damn tired. Growing up has been a blessing, but it has certainly taken a lot of work. For a period of time, I was worried that this constant striving and chasing would be unending. I was worried that I would forever be desperate to seek fulfillment.
But, how lovely it is to know now that I was so wrong. I realized that growing up is really growing out — growing out of myself and growing into the life in front of me in the here-and-now. Loving my own life has boiled down to knowing and understanding True Love — learning to accept True Love (and absolutely nothing less), and then giving that Love right back tenfold.
I confided in a very dear friend of mine whom I often go to for advice. I went to him with this fear of inevitable upset and chaos a few months ago. At the time, I was in the midst of multiple heartbreaks, moving apartments, navigating my promotion at work, fulfilling family duty overtime, beginning a serious fitness journey, and playing with the band and for the church all at once. I felt so alone, and I lost myself in the commotion. It looked like I was strong on the surface, but I was miserable.
Over time, life calmed down, and I was able to get my head above water again. I think my friend has noticed a change in me over the last few months. I certainly still have my ups and downs, but there is a stillness about me now that wasn’t quite there before. Was it circumstantial? Largely, yes. So many things out of my control somehow became the main forces that caused this whirlwind of my life to spiral into chaos. So sure, the stillness was partially due to life events calming down and stabilization of my environment. However, there has also (and more importantly) been a shift in my mindfulness and attitude. I have already discussed my matured understanding of what it means to grow and, in turn, what it means to Love. But how did I get there?
There are times that I do miss my childhood. Remembering my past never fails to ground me and make me feel whole again. Diving into my own story every once in a while has only ever deepened my understanding of what it means to Love. Remembering my roots inspires me to find my inner strength to keep going and not only move forward, but to move forward with grace, enthusiasm, and promise. Promise to my past self, who received the gift of Love from family and true friends very early on. Promise to my future self, who I hope can give that Love back out into the world to those who matter most.
“And Love in your heart wasn’t put there to stay; Love isn’t Love ’til you give it away!”
The Sound of Music
I have also spent a lot of time reflecting not only on my inner strength but also on my Faith. I have finally dipped my toe into the waters of really understanding what Faith means to me, who God is, and what even the freaking Plan might be. It is natural to feel lost in this phase of early adulthood when life seems so uncertain and unpredictable (not that life is ever actually predictable). It is easy to get lost in worry and fear of the future. Battling despair was a daily task of mine for a long while. But then the mindset shift occurred.
When my friend asked me how I felt about this shift, all I could say is that there was a subtle Peace that I wasn’t quite familiar with. It was hard for me to explain to him at the time, but he knew what I meant.
And then he said, “Notice that the Peace didn’t come when there was an absence of chaos. The Peace came subtly once you focused on your mindset and your Faith. Peace is a fullness. And you’re getting there.”
And that is what I had been missing all along. It is impossible to find Peace when chasing after it. Peace is found in the stillness of allowing growth to occur in its own time. Peace is found in the repose of everyday people and daily life.
“Virtues are formed in man by his doing the actions.”
Aristotle
How freeing it is that I am learning that I no longer need to be constantly on the run. How freeing it is to know that The Vices will not get the best of me this time around. Rushing time and attempting to skip over time has never and will never work. The Vices have only ever led to disappointment and heartbreak.
I clearly have a long way to go before I find ultimate Peace. I know that this journey will continue to be a challenge. But from now on, I will embrace the music lesson of life. I want to allow myself to hold the rests of life. To hold fast to my Faith, which I truly believe will allow me to find a new beat. A beat separate from my own. A beat with consistency. One with which others can share in and rely upon. One with God. One free of The Vices. One which will allow to be borne a masterpiece of harmony and perfect timing beyond my own imagination. One with a fullness beyond compare.
Not Really A Writer 