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July 16, 2005 at 5:55 AM

I love my violin teacher. I'm always in such a good mood after my lesson, no matter how crappy a workday I've had. She's like a therapist, but cheaper and more effective. :)

I'm constantly astounded at how poor my practicing skills are, given that I've developed very good study skills (after going to school for 21 years straight) and many of the concepts are similar. When there's something I can't play (like going from a 1st position natural harmonic on the A string to a 3rd position artificial harmonic on the G string), I tend to be afraid of it, pray it comes out---not very effective, since I'm an atheist!---and beat myself up if it doesn't. But Virginia teaches me to analyze what's going on: figure out where the problem is, and attack it one step at a time. Is it my left or right hand? Is it the first finger or the fourth finger? Suddenly, the problem doesn't seem so insurmountable.
This is exactly how I approach things in an academic environment; I just need to learn to apply that to my violin studies.

No practicing tonight, since I'm way behind on a work project and will be in deep doo-doo if I don't catch up this weekend. But I've made it my goal never to skip more than one day of practice without a really good reason. So I'm back on it, tomorrow.