coolpinkone said
@MACJR so happy that you are having fun and the nostalgia and fulfillment is awesome too.  

Learning is fun, espcially music.... and new techniques and the rewards that come from applying the information.

Congrats again.

Cheers,

Toni  

@coolpinkone - Ah, yes, the rewards of sore fingertips from a too long a session of trying to learn vibrato. Something I never learned as a kid. I remember my instructor doing vibrato, but I had not reached that level yet before I had to give up lessons.

Oh, wait, I guess that was not a reward, but a lesson instead. USE LESS FORCE next time!  

For me, I love to learn in general. I can get just as hooked into HTML, CSS, and PHP (raw under-the-hood geeky web page stuff) as learning the Treble Clef and Alto Clef, and all those symbols, keys, and timing things. Right now, I am keeping my focus on music, but I have many other interests that nag at me to get back to them.

My goal is to get back to work on my web sites, and or my writing, and my art too, sometime soon, but still keep up with my lessons and practice sessions. That is going to be difficult. I am one of those people who dive into something and put all my focus on that, and then find it hard to do anything else while my drive is still going hot for that project. I can get a lot done very fast that way, but it does not leave much room for anything else on the side.

So going to try to train myself to work on more than one thing at a time soon, because I do need to get back to work on my web sites, but I also want to get better at playing the violin, and learn the viola too.

And here I thought it was hard enough to find time to work out and get stuff done too.

MACJR

Fran said
@MACJR I too played in Jr. & High School in the 60's and stopped after that but have restarted in June of this year and am having so much fun!  I also believe that having played in the past has made it somewhat easier for me to start again. Enjoy the journey   

It has been fun, for the most part, for me. I went through one rough patch where I wondered if I was cut out for this, but then my playing smoothed out somewhat. I have better days, and some rough patches now and again, but the overall trend is that my playing is getting better. My fingers do get better and finding the right notes in what use to be finger-twister moves for me. And I am getting better at avoiding accidentally playing double stops, although it still happens every so often.  

It will be a while longer before I get to the playing level I want, but as long as I keep working at it, I will get there. I am sure of it. I cannot let myself give up when I have not given myself enough time and practice to achieve my goal of being at least an okay violin player.

I hope that you also find joy in your journey, Fran.  

MACJR

@coolpinkone, social interactions are always problematic for me. I am socially awkward, a bit more than it would seem, especially in person. Still, I have found this to be a good place to visit and talk. Better than any other place I have been to in a long time... since Facebook came around. Almost all my family and friends did a mass migration to that social forum, and then most of the smaller boards dried up and died, or are just barely hanging on these days.

I do not understand why so many people like Facebook. All most people do there is play games, show pictures, and share canned messages to each other, over and over and over and over again. The pictures, sure, some of those are nice, but the rest, I became more than fed up with years ago. I no longer even read my news feeds there. 99.99 percent pure waste of my time.

It is nice to find a place where people actually still talk with each other, and share some common interests with me.  

As for The Break Room, I have been looking into it a bit. I may post some stuff there in time. I tend to pock around a little here and there in-between doing other things.

As for focus, that I can do in abundance. I tend to focus one one thing for a time, and then shift to something else, in cycles. I am hoping to not shift away from playing though. I will have to find a way to keep at least part of my playing focus when I shift into high gear from one of my many other projects.

I am aware that having too many projects does mean that I will never finish any of them. They will always be in a perpetual stage of incomplete. It is the way it is, and I am the way I am. I need to shift to other things every so often to keep my mind active, interested, and motivated. I have never been able to stick to one task for too long. It become so boarding that I just cannot function in that task after some time.

I am hoping that with music, it will be different. Music can be my constant form of relaxation while my main drive is going strong on some other project. That is the hope anyway. Only time will tell if it works out that way... and that time is fast approaching. I have run into a computer issue that needs dealt with. This will require some time and focus. This is bound to get me on a hardware/software kick (I build and configure my own custom computers from brand name parts and software) for a bit. That usually leads to web page design, or computer graphics, or one of several other things. Web page design and computer graphics often go hand in hand with me, since I use my own art for my web page designs.

I also grow house plants.  

Well, going to look around here for a bit, then see if I can save some data before installing a fresh copy of Windows on my backup computer. I did not want to have to deal with this now, but I do like having a full PC backup computer ready for those times when I need it.

MACJR

Oh, Facebook does have its uses, it is just not that great of a social forum... for my needs. Worse, they compress images so much that my art is often ruined when I post it there. Family pictures usually survive the compression, but art does not always fare as well there.

Facebook does allow me to stay in touch with some of the people I care about though. And I do share pictures and news there, although much of the time, I feel like I am talking into the wind. I suppose that is better than getting sucked into one of those family drama sessions though.

I am violining happy when I am playing the violin.  

I hope the same is true for you.

MACJR