In a new high of self destructive amazingness, I have managed to bite the nail of my left index finer back by almost a quarter. It's not bleeding, amazingly, because there is some justice in the world, I imagine. It hurts when I play, but I've managed to play an hour and a half today despite it.
I'm kind of a mess. 2 weeks until my audition and I'm starting to feel the pressure. This morning I hacked away for about an hour before I had to walk away- I was so tense the muscles in my FOREARMS hurt, which is pretty much the opposite of what I should be doing. I went back again, took things slower and distanced myself from the stress. And it went better, but still hack. I took my hands away from the cello and they were shaking; probably from forgetting to eat breakfast.
I need to keep my anxiety under my will and control. I CAN do it, I can really wow everyone. So I will. I'll take another break, until my muscles don't feel weak, and go back at it again. Repeat and repeat and repeat.
The best thing is, everything in my audition program is roughly under my fingers- it just needs detail work now. I can do that, I can make everything sound clean. I have to remind myself I'm in a good place. Having my program roughly learned is better than still stumbling around. Now, everything needs to be perfectly in tune, perfectly executed. Clean up this shift here, that fumbling finger there.
Even though I feel the pressure, I feel strong and in control. I am able to keep my anxiety at bay. When I feel too much tension creep into practice, I get up and walk away and do something else until I have unwound. And when I go back, I see that I can last longer than the last time before becoming tight.
Now I just need a montage. Heh.
Friday, February 26, 2010
Thursday, February 25, 2010
Fail raid...
Since I am a pretty insufferable nerd, I am a GM in a world of warcraft guild. Because if anyone knows me, they know that when I get into something, I go balls to the wall. The guild in question is a raiding guild, and right now we're raiding the top tier content, Icecrown Citadel. It's motherfucking hard. It's retarded, takes an obscene amount of teamwork, which up until tonight the guild has been showing in spades.
Tonight, frankly, sucked balls. I think the last time we played so poorly was 4 months ago in Naxx- now there are some scary ass memories. Tonight we did the alliance gunship battle and deathbringer saurfang. While gunship is supposed to be easy train, Saurfang is gimicky, annoying, and hard as hell. Tellingly, we did badly on BOTH fights. We managed to down the gunship battle after the 2nd try, but Saurfang took 5 attempts, which is pretty pathetic by our usual standards.
It was the execution. Dps is pretty good, healers (myself and warbringer) and the tanks (fernando and andrax) are great. But this fight has a lot to do with crowd control, and for some special reason it took us 5 tries to get that part down. And everyone was playing poorly tonight. Warbringer is a generally ok guy, but he's cocky as all hell. When he's doing great, everything is awesome; his pontificating on how leet he is can be endearing. When he screws the raid over not healing the tanks like he's supposed to, he becomes petulant and butthurt, especially if you bring it to his attention that he's not doing his job.
We had a problem with Nubbz too- earlier before raid, he was going on and on about he was super leet in this fight, how he always crowd controls by himself. He also made a comment about how he expected Fernando to screw us over because Pally tanks are weak in that fight (pally tanks use a lot of aoe, which you can't do for fear of messing up the crowd control). I thought it was a pretty poor assumption of someone who has proved themself to be skilled at tanking. It was especially interesting when Nubbs had to get help from the other druid we had along for crowd control- he STILL tried to blame it on Fernando sometime around wipe 4. So stupid.
Anyways, we managed to down the boss, but it wasn't really a victory. Both Fernando and I were too annoyed to take part in the celebrations. And we ditched not long after.
Tomorrow, I'm just going to play cello, and not deal with the guild. I've got cranky raiders mad that they can't come to all raids, cranky raiders pissed that they're not getting preferential treatment, cranky raiders pissed when I point out the mistakes their making. I feel like I spend all this time making the guild a great place for people to play and I don't get any thing back at all, except for the accomplishment maybe. One person (out of like 40 people in the guild, past and present) has thanked me for doin what I do. ONE!
Like I said, tomorrow, is cello day. The next 2 weeks are cello days. I refuse to deal with any more guild bullshit until my audition is over.
Tonight, frankly, sucked balls. I think the last time we played so poorly was 4 months ago in Naxx- now there are some scary ass memories. Tonight we did the alliance gunship battle and deathbringer saurfang. While gunship is supposed to be easy train, Saurfang is gimicky, annoying, and hard as hell. Tellingly, we did badly on BOTH fights. We managed to down the gunship battle after the 2nd try, but Saurfang took 5 attempts, which is pretty pathetic by our usual standards.
It was the execution. Dps is pretty good, healers (myself and warbringer) and the tanks (fernando and andrax) are great. But this fight has a lot to do with crowd control, and for some special reason it took us 5 tries to get that part down. And everyone was playing poorly tonight. Warbringer is a generally ok guy, but he's cocky as all hell. When he's doing great, everything is awesome; his pontificating on how leet he is can be endearing. When he screws the raid over not healing the tanks like he's supposed to, he becomes petulant and butthurt, especially if you bring it to his attention that he's not doing his job.
We had a problem with Nubbz too- earlier before raid, he was going on and on about he was super leet in this fight, how he always crowd controls by himself. He also made a comment about how he expected Fernando to screw us over because Pally tanks are weak in that fight (pally tanks use a lot of aoe, which you can't do for fear of messing up the crowd control). I thought it was a pretty poor assumption of someone who has proved themself to be skilled at tanking. It was especially interesting when Nubbs had to get help from the other druid we had along for crowd control- he STILL tried to blame it on Fernando sometime around wipe 4. So stupid.
Anyways, we managed to down the boss, but it wasn't really a victory. Both Fernando and I were too annoyed to take part in the celebrations. And we ditched not long after.
Tomorrow, I'm just going to play cello, and not deal with the guild. I've got cranky raiders mad that they can't come to all raids, cranky raiders pissed that they're not getting preferential treatment, cranky raiders pissed when I point out the mistakes their making. I feel like I spend all this time making the guild a great place for people to play and I don't get any thing back at all, except for the accomplishment maybe. One person (out of like 40 people in the guild, past and present) has thanked me for doin what I do. ONE!
Like I said, tomorrow, is cello day. The next 2 weeks are cello days. I refuse to deal with any more guild bullshit until my audition is over.
I'm a fan of you
Once again I delved into the world of blogging. I kept a blog when I was a freshman in college, but after I faceplanted out of school I fell out of the practice of journaling, mainly because there was nothing about that particular time I wanted to remember. But now I've decided that momentary self inspection (in the form of a blog) could be healthy, and useful for keeping my mind active.
I'll warn you right now though, there isn't really anything going on in my life...just yet. Things are in a holding pattern, waiting for a few big moments to come to pass, and then it'll start chugging along again. Well, I shouldn't say that there isn't anything going on in my life, just that there isn't anything NEW. Why do I sound so petulant in this paragraph? Ugh.
A lot hinges on this audition in 2 weeks. Whether or not I'll be accepted back to Western to finish my degree in cello performance is an event in of itself, but on top of that, there is the matter of scholarship and whether I'll gain any. I don't think I will- I sound like a hack. I've always been a hack cellist, and I don't think that has changed.
Well, I should try to be fair to myself. The Bach sounds quite good overall. And the concerto is about 70% good/ 30% questionable. I don't even want to talk about the etude though. In fact, today I should just practice the etude and nothing else.
I spent my whole night trying to think of a name for this blog, and now that I chose one, I'm kind of irritated at it. It's pretty stupid.
I had a blogspot a few years ago, and my friend Dan had created this AWESOME format for it, so I'm going to resurrect that format because it is just too cool to be wasted on a graveyard blog. Cheers to you, my friend.
Maybe I'll be able to convince Fernando to blog again also- he has a very philosophic mind- his would be the kind of blog you can't wait to read the updates just because they make you think. I can't generate that kind of interest. My mind is too tangental now. All my focus is being used up for the audition.
I'll warn you right now though, there isn't really anything going on in my life...just yet. Things are in a holding pattern, waiting for a few big moments to come to pass, and then it'll start chugging along again. Well, I shouldn't say that there isn't anything going on in my life, just that there isn't anything NEW. Why do I sound so petulant in this paragraph? Ugh.
A lot hinges on this audition in 2 weeks. Whether or not I'll be accepted back to Western to finish my degree in cello performance is an event in of itself, but on top of that, there is the matter of scholarship and whether I'll gain any. I don't think I will- I sound like a hack. I've always been a hack cellist, and I don't think that has changed.
Well, I should try to be fair to myself. The Bach sounds quite good overall. And the concerto is about 70% good/ 30% questionable. I don't even want to talk about the etude though. In fact, today I should just practice the etude and nothing else.
I spent my whole night trying to think of a name for this blog, and now that I chose one, I'm kind of irritated at it. It's pretty stupid.
I had a blogspot a few years ago, and my friend Dan had created this AWESOME format for it, so I'm going to resurrect that format because it is just too cool to be wasted on a graveyard blog. Cheers to you, my friend.
Maybe I'll be able to convince Fernando to blog again also- he has a very philosophic mind- his would be the kind of blog you can't wait to read the updates just because they make you think. I can't generate that kind of interest. My mind is too tangental now. All my focus is being used up for the audition.
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