i've sorta got 3 posts going simultaneously just because i have a few things i want to put down in words but i can't quite complete the ideas. so for the sake of actually completing something i'm going to talk about my most recent lesson, which... was a whole thing.
i was listening to a psychology podcast recently (no like a legit one, not armchair psychology) in which they were talking about grit. grit is the trait where people persevere though difficult and/or tedious work where many others would have just walked away. it's the going-the-extra-mile sort of thing. i have it. i am gritful. or gritty. or engorged with grit. i dunno... it's one of those. it's certainly seen as a positive trait.
however.
it has negatives as well. a person with grititude will often persevere on something that may not be worth it or have diminishing returns at the expense of themselves. the idea of being able to brute force something just gets stuck in our thinkybits and we are often unable to know when is enough and move on to something else. i see it in myself all the time.
so in my lesson last night Todd was like "hey you've been putting in all this work on all these exercises and whatnot... and that's awesome, but now it's time to put it into use."
well shit. there it is. in my dumb logic i'm thinking i have to master all these things i've been practicing before i can even attempt to use them in actual music. i know, i mean like i know... i've literally thought that it's not the case and i should be using what i'm practicing but i get a gritty tunnel vision and stick with what i've been doing.
and that's what a good teacher is for. he knows what i should be doing and is there to push me in the right directions. often those new directions are really uncomfortable, which is terribly good. they're likely directions i would have avoided because they seemed too awkward or vague to pursue, but that is the exact reason i need to put work in on them. the teacher is there to keep you on task. that, having been said, i've got some work to do.
