"I haven't practiced enough today."
"I can't, I have to practice."
“You should be practicing 6 hours every day if you want to be in this studio/get in to grad school/win that audition.”
“If you’re not practicing,
you’re just wasting time.”
Any of that sounding familiar?
I know what it’s like to practice for hours and hours and feel like you’re not making any progress. When I was studying, I was plagued with injuries, and I had to radically redesign my style of working.
I felt so much shame, and I constantly felt like I was lazy. I sometimes still feel that today, like I should be practicing more in order to “deserve” my principal job-- the messaging is so insistent!
I believe that our industry sucks the creativity out of us.
We aren’t encouraged to seek different solutions, or behave like individuals.
We are encouraged to achieve accuracy, and musicianship is secondary
I think we deserve a better profession. We can be more creative, and that starts
at home in the practice space with each one of us.
We all deserve to investigate the ways of working that work best for us.
