Playing Flute in a Community Band

When I went back to school in September 2017 (I decided to study in a library and information technician program online through a college's distance education), I also decided to join a community band in my city. I play flute and loved being in concert band in high school. I was definitely a band geek and it was amazing! High school would not have been the same without all of those band practices, concerts, band trips, and fellow band geek friends! Missing my high school concert band days was only part of the reason why I wanted to join a community band though. I also wanted to start playing flute again and just be a part of something. Getting sick in 2016 really pushed me to want to live life to the fullest!

When I joined the band, I was the only flute there. Because of this, as well as the fact that I hadn't played in a band for so long, I started experiencing a lot of anxiety while trying to practice the music with everyone. Everyone makes mistakes but I was so afraid to play a wrong note or not be able to hit a high note. It also freaked me out when I heard myself playing because I knew that everyone else could hear me too and I felt like they were judging me. I actually started hyperventilating a few times where I had to leave the room and sit out in the hall crying. After that happened, I started resorting to sitting out in the hall with my flute and music and trying to follow along. My anxiety had become so bad that I couldn't even be in the same room as everyone else. I also knew that I would not be able to participate in any of the concerts. Eventually, another flute player joined and she was a beginner so I now had a fellow flute to play with who was going to make mistakes. I should have been more comfortable, right? Wrong. I still sat out in the hall, trying to follow along and attempting, and failing, to play the music.

I finally started spending our practices in the room when we started playing Christmas music. Christmas music is fun, a lot easier, and more familiar to me than the other pieces. It made me build up some of the confidence that I needed to push me through my anxiety. Even though I still experienced a lot of anxiety, I managed to play some pieces and, more importantly, stayed in the same room as everyone else. It felt so amazing to be able to do that. I continued to practice in the room even after we were done with Christmas music. Eventually though, the pieces were just way too hard for me and my anxiety was still high so I stopped going to the practices for the rest of the year.

This past Fall, I went back to band. I still had anxiety but I continued to push through it. The other flute player and I started planning private practices on our own to practice the music and they have really been helping. Another flute player eventually joined which has made me even more comfortable and we all work together to help each other. I have been improving not only when it comes to playing, but also with my anxiety. I have been playing higher notes and have not been afraid of making a mistake. Now the problem is mostly that some of the pieces are too difficult or too fast but at least I try to play rather than not playing at all. I still don't participate in the concerts but maybe some day I will. I feel like I have come so far and that just makes me so happy!

Cheers,
Kaylie

My Goals for 2017

I revealed my word for 2017, HEALTH, in January but I'm a bit late to the whole 2017 goals party. That's okay! The great thing about personal goals is that you can start any time! I'm still going to refer to this as my 2017 goals list though, since we aren't actually that far into 2017. For this goals list, I had to force myself to keep it a bit more simple. For one thing, I limited myself to five major goals. I did this so that my goals list wouldn't be overwhelming. I have so many things that I want to do but I needed to choose to mainly focus on only a few of those things and I needed to choose the goals that are the most important to me at this time. I also tried to be specific with my goals. Instead of writing down to just do something more often, I decided to say how often I want to do it. I also decided not to go overboard with each goal. Of course I'd love to do these things way more than I decided, but, once again, I don't want to overwhelm myself. I put a limit on things so that I can ease into my goals more easily. I'm also happy that I have two health related goals on my list to go with my word for the year. So, without further ado, here are my goals for the year of 2017.

1) Read 25 novels: I chose this goal for one specific reason: I want to read more books. It's as simple as that. I studied English Literature in university but I don't read as many books as people would think. Sometimes it takes me months to get through a novel. It sits on my table or keeps getting packed in my purse, hoping to be read a lot more but that just doesn't happen. I become busy with other things or I just have trouble concentrating enough to sit down and read. That's just the way I am but I want to change that. I thought of setting my goal at a much higher number, something crazy like 50 or 100 novels this year, but I felt that that was much too high. I get overwhelmed easily so I often need to start things off small and go from there. I have a feeling that I'll probably read more than 25 novels this year but I'm still keeping it at 25 in my mind just so that I don't scare myself too much. I want to actually achieve this goal.

2) Do yoga every day: This one is so important! I have found that yoga helps me a lot. If I start feeling down, yoga picks me right up! I just do yoga at home in my living room. I have lots of yoga DVDs so I move furniture, set up my mat, take off my socks, put on some finger-less exercise gloves to help with grip, pop in a DVD, and away I go. My Mom often joins me and actually gets a bit mad if I start doing yoga without her. I love yoga because it helps with strength, flexibility, balance, and it helps me relax and concentrate. I feel great after doing a yoga practice. I feel happy and ready for anything. So far, I've been doing some yoga here and there but I want to do more. It is definitely something that I need to do every day.

3) Meditate every day: This is another important one. Meditation is so beneficial but I have a lot of trouble with it. My mind wanders too much so I have trouble concentrating on the meditation whether I am just meditating on my own or using a guided meditation. Meditation takes practice and we need to train our brain to meditate so I need to practice meditation much more to get any better at it.

4) Practice piano and flute once a week: I miss playing piano and flute. I used to take private piano lessons and I also taught piano. While I was in high school, I played flute in concert band. I miss all of this. I want to bring piano and flute back into my life but I'm a bit nervous to start playing again since I haven't really played much in the past few years. This is all for my own enjoyment, however, so I though that I better take it slow and ease my way back into practicing my instruments again. I decided that once a week isn't too overwhelming and I can make sure that I definitely set aside time to practice.

5) Publish blog posts three times a week: I started this goal two weeks into January and so far so good. I enjoy writing blog posts and it really helps with my writing and it gets me thinking about certain topics a lot more. I looked back on some of my old posts, thinking that they weren't so great and I actually considered deleting all of them and starting fresh but they weren't actually that bad. Some of them were pretty good. I realized that I've become better at writing blog posts and I want to keep improving. I have also been working on writing longer posts and expanding more on the topics that I write about whenever I write a post. When deciding on how often to post, I felt that three times a week was good. It isn't too much or to little and it isn't too overwhelming.

I guess I'll just have to see how it goes. I'll talk about my goals again at the end of the year to see how far I've come with them. No matter what, it's a start. And we all have to start somewhere.

Cheers,
Kaylie