No-Win Situation?
I am not sure if it is the appropriate title, but I ran into a strange situation lately. I just wonder maybe some of you who had experienced this before can give me some pointers.Long story short, I have been made redundant by my company recently. The bad news is I am jobless (for now). The good news is I have time to practise (finally), which is more or less the first thing came to my mind when my boss told me about the redundancy.
So in the past few weeks, I gradually increase my practice time. However, I notice that I feel increasingly unsatisfied. I feel that when I was working, there is very little time to practise the violin. On the negative side, there is annoyance on never being able to practise that technique, passage, etc. On the positive side, I feel that I have made an effort. I was doing my very best to squeeze time out from the busy day to practise.
Now, when time is on my side, I feel very unsatisfied. I feel guilty when I am not motivated to practise (even I was still practising, just not very motivated). I feel guilty when the day passes so quickly and I haven't been squeezing more time to practise. I feel annoyed very easily that I make the mistake on something I thought I fixed the day before. Taking the violin out from the case and do a few scale doesn't give me any credit like before, because I don't have any reason/excuse of not practising now. I have a feeling that it is either I don't really know how to manage free time (don't have much back then when I was working), or have unrealistic expectation on how the free time will benefit me.
I am just curious if anyone who went from a busy office job to freelance, or jobless, or retirement. Do you get a feeling of uneasiness at the beginning? The feeling that you finally have time but at the same time, not enough time. There is a constant restlessness. What did you do to make peace with your mind?
Thank you very much!
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Replies (11)
It's important to keep yourself busy, with woodworking or maintenance or volunteering or working out or whathaveyou. And even if you hate schedules, you will benifit from at least thinking about how you will spend your day and how much time you will allot for everything.
I recently retired and have been doing more practice than when working, but there's much house maintenance to catch up on, and thus I become to tired physically to take the violin out, but I took this opportunity to play through my pieces in my head which I neglected while working.
And being retired there isn't much incentive to go out playing for payment, but I am now more determined to play my pieces at the local open stage venue.
When I've had extended days at home to practice now, I will get ready as if I were going to work, do work on the computer (I have a side-business), practice for a couple of hours, break to do something else, return to practicing, break to do something else, cook or whatever, and so on. I love routines, and feel most people perform at their best when they stick to them.
I also think, even though I'm not a psychologist, that your situation with the violin is a mirror/metaphor for how you are feeling about your work-life and life in general. (For me, how I feel about the violin is usually a fantastic metaphor for how I am feeling about my life... my therapist told me that this a rather common thing.)
Keep posting here!
What are you currently working on with the violin, in addition to your scales?
At the moment, I am rotating between a few different tasks: 1. look for a job, 2. learn a new programming skill that may help me in looking for a job, 3. play violin, 4. household chore, 5, procrastinate. Sometimes I will do one more, and sometimes I will do less. One thing I notice is, now I am not working, I can bail on any task if I don't feel like it. If I struggle to sleep at night, I can just stay in bed longer in the morning. I eat when I am hungry, not during the usual office lunch break. I go shopping for food not on weekend, but on random days since I am not at work. It is total freedom for me, but I feel a bit lost.
Maybe I really need to stick to a stricter schedule/routine and set some goals. One thing I do worry about is, one day when I retire, I probably will struggle to adapt. Assuming I get a job soon, it will happen in 10 years or so.
@Pamela, I am working on the Wohlfahrt book. I bought a copy after reading Laurie's interview with Rachel Barton Pine. I progress rather slowly on this. The orchestra session is starting in a week. So I am expecting probably 4-5 pieces to work on for this semester. Hopefully nothing too crazy. Before the summer, one conductor gave us a Jazz piece that had a few very difficult bars. I think at least half of the section just air bow there.
You really have to find what works for you. Some people have trouble working at home because they get distracted, and so some people leave the house in order to work in certain other spaces, because it allows them to get their head in the game. I personally think that if you can help it, it's best to not play too many games with yourself, but you need to figure out what works for you.
You might tell yourself that you are going to go on a short walk, and then as soon as you do that, you will get right to practicing, or you might practice, and then immediately reward yourself with a fun activity, or a snack , or whatever.