Noticing who I am now
It has almost been 8 years of doing the best thing I ever started - my blog. It has brought me so much joy, and has been the catalyst for so many other incredible things in my life. I met some of my favourite people through starting my blog. I wrote and self-published books because of my blog. I started my podcast because of my blog. I even launched into a new career - because of my blog.
And now - 8 years later, I want to celebrate this milestone with 8 lessons I learned over the past 8 years of blogging. One of them (which I may write about more at length) is that having a practice of writing and sharing has had wide reaching impacts on my life - some of them that feel totally unrelated - but that are intimately linked. It only seems fitting to write this series - since writing life lessons started it all - and I miss writing lessons. So this series is about 8 lessons I have learned in the past 8 years of blogging. I hope you enjoy them as much as I enjoyed writing them!
My nephew sent me a letter the other day. It has brought me immense joy - as I have been hoping that he would become a letter writer - even as a 10 year old living in a digital era. I have tried to encourage him by sending him cards and letters since he was old enough to notice them, and while this isn’t the first letter he has sent back to me, I have enjoyed seeing his letter writing grow in sophistication while still maintaining his hilarious personality. (And thanks to my sister - who obviously purchased the stamps and ensured that the letter got mailed!!!)
As I was discussing the letter with one of my sisters, we began to muse on the lasting impact that events in childhood have on us as adults. My nephew told me a story of something that happened at school, and I thought of friends that I have who are my contemporaries who speak of childhood experiences in a way that shows - they haven’t recovered from them. In addition, over the years, I have had many conversations with adults who feel the legacy of childhood proclamations to this day.
The person who wants to write a book but who remembers “not being any good at English” when they were at school. The many adults who proclaim they “don’t do maths”. The people who can see so clearly what is impacting them - but stay stuck because of something that a teacher, parent or another student said to them so long ago.
I definitely understand this. For me I have recently discovered there are legacies from school days impacting me. One example is my opinion about whether someone would be attracted to me (even though I didn’t think of myself as unattractive - another story for another time). And another one is the subject of today’s post - my inability to read music - going back to the days of taking exams for the flute and freezing up when I was presented with the music to sight read.
For a bit of background - I have dabbled in instrument playing since childhood. I have had a lifelong desire to play music - and over the years have revisited playing music - in various forms. My latest attempt has seen me return to the flute which I first started to play as a pre-teen. One of the reasons that it has taken me so long to revisit playing an instrument is my inability (or more accurately unwillingness) to read music. As a child, we had a piano in the house, and remember using John Thompson modern grades to try to learn the piano. From an early age, I knew that I had a good ear for music, and I used this to cop out from reading music - choosing instead to play by ear on the piano, and then the recorder, and then the flute.
I have no idea whether my orchestra instructor was aware that I wasn’t reading music - instead taking the score home, deciphering it and memorising the pieces. It hardly matters now - although now that I am teaching I can see that my teachers probably knew way more than I was giving them credit for. After a few flute exams, I decided not to do any more - because not reading music meant that exams became more and more complicated (even more so than the natural progression).
When I went to university, I hoped to join an orchestra, and immediately felt intimidated by those who described themselves as “amateurs” but yet who had taken exams all the way up to grade 8 - in both instrument and theory. I quietly put my flute down, and threw myself into other activities - singing and theatre to name some. I didn’t pick the flute back up until my late twenties - when I tried to join a brass band, and was told early on that I needed to be able to sight read so that I could play their immense back catalogue in the next concert. I felt discouraged, having flashbacks to my teenage flute exams, and I didn’t stay in the band for very long after faking my way through the first concert we performed.
After that, I didn’t pick up the flute again - although I did go along to some of my sister’s piano lessons for a few months a few years later - and even took one or two myself. All along, I described myself as being unable to read music, and - figuring I was too old to learn - turned my attention elsewhere.
During that time, I continued to sing in a variety of choirs off and on, and didn’t put any energy into playing instruments. I have had several conversations over the years - most recently with a work colleague who was learning to play the piano and who assured me that not reading music wasn’t a problem. In fact, she said that she was being taught using a method that actively encouraged playing by ear - and it was the first time that I considered it might be a positive trait rather than one that made me a lazy musician - an opinion I held about myself - feeling like I had taken the easy way out all those years ago playing music.
Then - about a year ago, I had the opportunity to play the saxophone - one of my childhood dreams. I won’t go too deeply into that story (which is still unfolding) but that led me to recently returning to the flute - with a renewed desire to learn to read music. I bought a beginner book, and went back to the basics.
Several things became obvious to me at that time. One was that I knew more about reading music than I had given myself any credit for. The second was that years of singing in choirs and using music scores have led to me being better at reading music than I realised. And this morning, as I sat playing the flute, I began to reflect on the conversation I had with my sister.
It is easy to hold onto the things that we believed about ourselves from childhood - whether it was due to being told something negative or indirectly coming to those conclusions by comparing ourselves to those around us. But who we are now is not who we were then. And the experiences of our lives have improved our skills - both at something we thought we were not good at - or at our ability to learn and improve.
There are so many different techniques involved in teaching and learning which may mean that we can learn something in a different way to the way it was taught at school. We may have been going through something traumatic at the time that was impacting our ability to learn and approaching it now we may find an increased capacity to learn.
I don’t think I would have believed in my ability to read music if I had not picked back up the flute - even though I have learned so many things over the years - and continue to learn things. I had no doubt in my ability to learn things - and yet… there is something about the legacy of our childhood beliefs that can hold us tighter than we realise.
And so I am here to remind you - as much as I remind myself - that you are not the person now who you were then.
We can learn new skills.
We can improve the skills that we didn’t think we were good at.
We do not have to hold fast to the things we used to believe about ourselves.
Everything that we have done and experienced has made us more than capable of doing the thing.
We can write a new story - starting today.
What is something you used to believe about yourself that you want to change?