Preparation For The Day My Chance Will Come

"I will prepare and some day my chance will come."  ~Abraham Lincoln

As you can tell, I'm a big quote enthusiast (I research them, seek them out and retain them in my brain like I retain movie quotes/information.  I am also a big presidential history buff and Abraham Lincoln is one of my favorites.) and I've always liked this one.  A lot of people may say that it has a kind of "waiting" innuendo and thus puts an emphasis on that.  That it doesn't tell us most of getting what we want in life includes hard work and going after what we want, not waiting for it to come to us.  But I don't think that's necessarily what this quote is saying.  I think you need to look at the word, "prepare."  By preparing that means doing the work so therefore you aren't just waiting around for your chance to come to you, you are working by preparing, preparing is working.

There is so much I need to do, to prepare for when my chance will come that I need to start getting back up on my feet.  I'm tired of being in this deep dark place but as I wrote in an earlier post, it's so hard to crawl out of it.  It's like falling down a muddy slope and trying to get back up to the top when you're all slippery with the mud, slippery with the darkness.  As I've said, it's easier to stay in the dark than do the work to find the light and even harder to do the work to STAY there.  But there has been one thing I've gone back to and that's the piano where I took lessons for around 13 years and achieved the highest level in music theory - Level 10- and I taught it, too.  It's my favorite instrument.  I loved playing the piano and then when I moved to New York, I didn't have a piano so I went almost 4 years without playing and now since my accident another 3.5 years has gone by so it's safe to say, I'm a little rusty but I'm not without the talent I once I had.  I just need to get to practicing again.

Maybe 5 months or so after my accident, I decided that I wanted to get a new, very nice but not overboard digital piano and sell our old one.  I didn't want all these fancy buttons to do stuff, I just wanted a very simple, but very nice digital piano with pedals and weighted keys.  Those last two things were a must.  And I'm not talking about those kind of digital pianos that just sit on a stand, I'm talking about a serious digital piano.  And one day in Portland, after a doctor appointment, I came across the perfect, most beautiful digital piano.  And for a good price, I bought it with my own money.  It looks just like a regular piano with a beautiful black finish. But it continued to sit for awhile.  I played it a little when it first came home but then I was so frustrated that I wasn't at my top level of performance as when I last played, I didn't want to play anymore.  So I stopped.  I was even angry at myself.   But now, just this week, I got some inspiration from my favorite band, The White Stripes :)  I was listening to a song called, "Take, Take, Take" and it's one of my favorite songs cause the lyrics are really great.  The unfortunate part is, there are no piano books on any of Jack's piano songs, he's only released guitar tab books for his work.  So that's really frustrating.  But I listened and listened and listened and started to learn it by ear and I finally got it and as I continued to play it better and better, I was really enjoying myself and it felt so good to touch those keys again.  To make music again.  It was music to my ears, literally.  Even it if was still a little rusty, it felt good and with it feeling so good it made me continue to play everyday, multiple times a day and thus making me better and better.  Music has always made me feel better.  Jack White's music has gotten me through some very rough times in my life and he's continuing to help me get through this time and playing his music is, I don't know, giving some life back to my soul because music resides in my soul, performance resides in my soul.

There are many other things I need to do to prepare if my chance is going to come someday.  Such as getting my singing voice back with the help of a dear friend who teaches it and could really help me and looking at some monologues, reading plays again and watching old movies again.  Cause if my day comes, and I have not prepared, that chance will slip through my fingers and fall at my feet, the feet that I couldn't get myself to stand back up on.  And that, I will never forget and never forgive myself for.