I'm talking to him right now!

Riffing on Lauren's post from last week...

Back when we started this blog, we settled on a schedule: better to get readership, according to one of Lauren's seasoned blogger friends. I was supposed to post on Tuesday, the better to record shenanigans from weekly band rehearsals.

For those not paying attention, it's now Thursday, and here I am doing a major re-write of this week's post, because I've been having a lot of conversations with my little hater. On many topics, one of which is this post.

I should say, I've never thought of him as a hater. Or as a "he" particularly, although I guess anything living in my head is at least mostly male. I've always viewed him as more like a trickster, your Anansi or Brer Rabbit or Loki type, who makes me do stupid things the stupidest way possible and then laughs at me. Like this week he's been saying "nobody reads the blog, and nobody cares about your opinion!" Which is almost certainly true, but completely ignores the point of doing the blog in the first place.

Futility seems to be his major weapon. (Or her, the tricksters always seem to be whatever gender gets the job done, right?) And the best part is he talks with the same voice as the rational side of my brain. So I'll start off with something that would be tough to argue, like, "This player is better than me." Which is often debatable, but at least an easy argument to make. But then it goes to "so there's no point in working hard if you're going to be second best regardless." Which is completely wrong: for starters, I have to work pretty hard right now to be fourth best, but I don't play to be the best, I play to make music, have a way to express myself, and to connect with other people. All of those goals become easier to achieve with the quality of musicians you play with, and you don't get to be the fourth best trombonist in an Award-Winning Community Band by resting on your laurels!

Which brings me to another of the defenses against the Hater, or the Inner Loki. (I'm feeling particularly Danish this week, for no apparent reason, so I'm going with the Norse theme.) I mentioned last week listening to musicians that inspire me- well, I'm in a section full of them right now, and I want to be able to hang, to contribute, and to not let them down. That's a pretty strong motivation for me; an Inner Baldur, knocking back the spears, to continue the Norse theme. And as long as that view keeps winning (which it does most days) I'll keep practicing.

Now if I could actually get blog posts out on time, we'd be set!