I often wonder, what would have happened if I missed opportunities and took others? I applied to a lot of schools for journalism in which I actually didn’t get into most of them, but I had gotten accepted into the Scripps journalism program at Ohio University which is actually a pretty good program. However, because of my wish to be closer to home to spend time with my family, I chose my current school over that. I don’t regret my choice one bit, but sometimes I realize how much different my life if the story just ended there.
So the way my school's journalism program worked was that I had to wait almost a whole year before being accepted into the program, so I foolishly decided that it wasn’t worth it and wanted to start a program the instant he began school. So up until then, I had been playing piano for 12 years and viola for only 8 years. I was okay at piano, and pretty bad at viola. To be completely honest, I was a terrible viola student throughout high school and even considered quitting taking private lessons because I hated them (I actually really had no reason to, but I just did). Another part of my life that would have affected so much of the future. But for some reason, past the halfway point of my senior year, something just clicked. I thought, “is this it? Am I just going to be done with playing music all of a sudden?” At this point, I was on the fence with journalism so I decided to take a chance. I would ask if I could audition late into my school's music school, and if they didn’t let me/if I didn’t make it, I would just have to be content with studying journalism. However, I was able to get the opportunity to audition and actually somehow got in, which I will forever be grateful for. Side note, up until that point, I don’t think I had ever practiced that hard in my entire life.
Honestly, I’ve doubted myself so much this last year, the main doubt being, “should I even be doing music? Am I even good enough?” I even considered adding a completely different major twice. Throughout first semester and halfway through second semester, the voice in my head was always saying, “you don’t really deserve to be here, you almost never practiced in high school,” or “you got lucky,” and even “everyone who you were in orchestra with probably thinks you’re stupid for pursuing music, I mean you weren’t even good” (This one especially when I decided I wanted to switch to viola performance). The voices and maybe even some people might be right, but I’ve discovered that these are the things that drive me to be better and what have driven me to where I’ve progressed today.
I have a lot of goals now, and a vision of what I’d like to accomplish. These are what motivates me, because it’s hard to compare and compete with my peers because I really don’t need to. They’ve done a lot more than I have when it comes to music and growing up with music. These goals are what motivate me to become better as a musician and as a person. This past year, I’ve been actually pretty happy for the most part when it comes to what I’m doing with my life, and how I’ve progressed so far as a musician. But, I know musically, I haven’t even gotten to where I personally want to be so I know I just have to work even harder.
Peace, Love, and Guido