I'm sure like many of you there are things that I would really like to do (especially musically) but I start researching how to do x, y or z and (maybe) start perparing for it but almost always NEVER go through with it. Question is I don't know why!

Anyone else get this?

Yup! Know what you mean.

For me the inertia is down to living so far past the back of beyond everything is a long way away. Anything I might want to do, especially musically, involves long distances and therefore a lot of expense, it just seems easier not to bother. Then that becomes the default response.

This year I've been determined to get out there more, but for my trouble the two festivals I was going to attend have been rained off. Great!

A couple of years back I made an effort to get out and do more and over the course of the year it got easier, kind of a case of getting some momentum going. I found starting with small targets and building up worked well for me.

Oh loads of times yes. Mainly in my "semi-keen" rockclimbing/mountaineering/skiing period. Many a plan has been hatched, mulled over and put on hold. Now if I had been "proper-keen".

If there is one 'dream' that I have, it is to be a novelist, and write. I have dozens of ideas. My writing isn't too awful. I have written previous long works, even if they never got completed because I realised their limitations.

After finishing Uni I thought I would have more Misti-time to spend on this. I even joined a writing class (quite an expensive course) to get me back into the habit of writing regularly, and give me the impetus to do so.

And I started a new job.

No-one told me that the new job would involve spending weeks of time at another site. In a hotel. I missed half the (expensive) course. My life never fell into enough of a routine for me to find a regularly time for writing. I underestimate how much of my energy my job would soak up, and how much it would take over my life. I'm still making excuses...

Still, I relocate again in a few months. Perhaps the new role will allow more time and routine for writing...

Misti - I write too Sometimes get chance to do it, sometimes don't but it's purely a hobby for me that I really enjoy.

Anyhow, realised why I end up not getting a lot of stuff done ... "stuff" crops up like this afternoon I've had to do the clutch and get the engine back into my MG Midget ... I don't work anything like full time hours and haven't a clue how people fit 40 hours a week in at work??? :s

My diploma plans were something like that - I mentioned this on another thread briefly - I thought about doing ATCL when I first re-started piano and came up with a programme. Even learnt some pieces and revisited new ones. But then I decided I didn't want to have that as a plan. I wanted my plan to be to get good at piano, without the pressure of another music exam. When I'm good enough that I can just polish up pieces and not have to spend a year learning them and working up the technique, then I'll think about it. As I said in the other thread: That is an intentionally high bar that I may never reach.

I would love to learn to draw. Specifically, with coloured pencil. I have a lot of kit that I bought when I took some art classes some years ago. Fortunately, art kit of this sort doesn't go stale like paints.

I would also really like to work through some of the online courses at http://ocw.mit.edu - I get drunk on knowledge. I know, I know, I'm a swot.

See? We find time for those things we are "proper-keen" on.

I wish I hadn't clicked on that link! I will now spend all night browsing

Just tried to play my piano and feel so ill every note seemed to be wrong




LOL something like that ... although I think this was a case of need to get it back on the road as we have a RR day on Friday booked to tune it.

Horrible, horrible job will probably have nightmares about how long it takes to get a bottom starter motor bolt into an MG Midget

OCW is eeeeeeeevil Many of the American universities are starting this sort of thing, Harvard and Stanford have equivalents, but MIT was the first.

There'll always be another day for piano - hope you feel better soon.

Thinking about it, I am achieving the seemingly impossible now with piano because I am playing things I never thought I had a dream of playing. This is not to say that I'll be getting any recording contracts soon, but I didn't think that an adult student with that many years away from piano would be able to develop the technique to play "hard stuff". I continue to be surprised at what steady practising can do. Impossibility is sometimes a state of mind. To some of my teacher's child prodigy students, the stuff I'm playing is stuff they'd have mastered when they were 10 (one of the best youtube recordings of the recital piece I'm doing is by a 13 year old - hmph ). But to me, they seemed impossible.

But don't you find that half of the pleasure of having all these things that you want to do or can't find the time/money/motivation is about day-dreaming about it?

I have lots of things I want to do: the novel, Grade 8 viola, the marathon (I can't even run 50 metres), re-decorate the entire interior of my house, a course in illustrating children's books, a course in relief printing etc. but I do enjoy day-dreaming about these things. I'm hoping to do most of them one day (apart from the marathon.. really) and every now and then I dig out the outline for the novel, or practice scales , but real life always seems to get in the way.

I'm lucky that my job is about creativity so I'm not battling to spend time doing something more fulfilling because I already love what I do. Maybe this means my motivation isn't strong enough to do other things but I enjoy the dream (and actually bought curtains yesterday to replace the old, faded, paint-splattered ones in my studio )

I know the feeling - for me it's two things mainly, fear of failure and massively overestimating how difficult/ time-consuming things are going to be. I have a tendency to think things have to work perfectly or it's a disaster, and so I avoid even trying just in case...

What is starting to work for me though, like BadStrad said, is breaking things down into little steps, so even if I don't achieve the final big thing in the end I have still achieved something on the way to it. And, well, just 'feeling the fear and doing it anyway' - trying to go 'lalala I'm not listening' to the voice that says I can't do that, that's the sort of thing other (cleverer/ better/ more confident etc etc) people do. If other people, why not me?

It's amazing how much time and energy you can find if you really want to do something. Keeping a diary of how you use your time for a week or two can be very enlightening if you're trying to find spare time for something - even if you can just dedicate half an hour a day or a couple of hours a week to it, it's still progress. This is from someone who spent years thinking I was too tired/ busy from work to do all the things I really wanted to do, when in fact I was quite scared and a bit lazy I think turning 30 a couple of years ago gave me a bit of a jolt and my 'spare' time has been pretty packed since - took up the flute again, finished my OU degree, did voluntary work.

If you think how you'll feel in 10/ 20 years time.. will you regret not doing/ trying to do those things...?

So *ahem* nobody wants to know about OU Openlearn then? Small free online extracts from OU courses. You can lose weeks in there. <quick exit>

Yeah, it's usually money which lets me down on following up my dreams. I actually put my head seriously down and prepared a whole piano exam syllabus last year (which is quite something, usually I get as far as buying the book and sometimes the CD before deciding I will never be able to do it) but found out I had misread the fees table and the grade I wanted to take was going to be vastly more expensive than I could justify for a certificate telling me I could play what I knew I could play. Diplomas tend to go the same direction, but I feel at least by preparing for them and knowing that I could do them it makes me do something. Particularly, I am way more likely to play some modern music if I have to prepare it for a reason, otherwise I don't get much further forward than middle era Beethoven. I don't end up doing them for reasons of finance, difficult dates and also wondering if there is a point. Is there much to be gained from doing it? Who, except me, would ever care? Particularly with the performance dip, I'd love to be excused from doing the A diploma as the L allows you to have 1/3 of your program in a specialist subject, orchestral excerpts or ensemble. That's what I like to do, I simply hate playing alone, so although I want to demonstrate an ability to that level, I don't want to be compelled to play solo repertoire. I just find that nothing cries out to me do this, do this, definitely do this, so the money is never found. I reckon if I sit ready to do it then if I find an amazing opportunity which I can enter only if I have a diploma then I can quickly bring everything together and do one.

Yes! When i started out as a horn student in university my teacher said: I will teach you if you will agree to practise at least one and a half hours a day. It was that or have no teacher so I found the time - even if it was going to the practise rooms at 7am. On top of a full university schedule, classes, labs, rehearsals for whatever, I found the time even if it had to be between other classes. Of course it helped that there were practise rooms so I didn't have to worry about noise, but I still had to bother to do it.

I've never been able to do anything with that level of dedication since

Ooh, that's quite a resource. I can't decide. Relativity, Quantum Physics, String Theory, Astrophysics, The Early Universe?


Hmm, I think awkward may well be a BL speciality. It brings back memories of a pesky clutch slave cylinder on a Marina Twincam.

Marina Twincam??? Are you sure you don't mean Twin Carb?

Oops. Could I excuse myself by saying I might have been thinking about the Dolly Sprint? No not really.