My main issue comes down to music.
1. No confidence about my playing abilities
2. Anxiety when practicing, especially when people are around
3. Issues it causes when it comes to my musician boyfriend.
So, I started playing guitar at age 13. I progressed relatively quickly, and enjoyed it a lot. However, I never learned a song the whole way through. I'd mess up each time I'd play and I started to feel like I was incompetent. I always played quietly in my room because I abhorred the fact that my parents could possibly hear me playing the same thing again and again and still mess up.
Then in high school I started doing double bass as well. The fact that it was a new instrument allowed me the freedom of messing up because, hey, it was a new instrument. Now I am taking lessons in college and I'm starting to feel the oppression of perfectionism again. Like, I constantly compare myself to others during practice. I wonder how easy/hard it is for other people, and whether I am going at a ridiculously slow pace, and whether I'm just simply incompetent. I hate the fact that people can hear me practicing outside the room, especially since it's obviously located at the school of music at my college.
(My father has no idea I'm taking lessons because he hates the fact that I play a musical instrument. He thinks it's distracting and destructive. My parents both always told me I wasn't talented to go into music, despite my insistence that I never planned on it anyway).
Add to this the fact that my boyfriend started playing violin like 2 years ago and has already resolved that he wants to be a music major. He's extremely talented at it. I used to know more about theory than him and now it's completely the reverse. I resent him when he talks about classical music because I feel like I have nothing of value to contribute, and I never want to play with him because my level is substandard. It's gone so far as I feel like music is his thing, and I feel like I'm trespassing his domain when I play or practice or learn new stuff.
Obviously, this fucking sucks. I've never really voiced this before so yeah, pretty emotionally charged. But I have so much shit cluttering my head that I start to wonder if I should just quit or not. I just want to make sense of all of this because music has so much baggage for me. When I enjoy it it's thrilling. I know I would regret quitting. I want to create something beautiful and to play beautifully. But the mental constipation is hilariously distracting to my goal.
Thanks if you read this wall of text. I just really want some insight. What's the root of this? How are the factors all playing together? Why can't I drop this attitude? Does the fact that I must ask if this is right for me intrinsically indicate it is not, in fact, right for me (which is a terrifying concept)? I'm thinking of taking this issue to my school's counselor but I don't know if that's overly dramatic or not.
Cheers.
1. No confidence about my playing abilities
2. Anxiety when practicing, especially when people are around
3. Issues it causes when it comes to my musician boyfriend.
So, I started playing guitar at age 13. I progressed relatively quickly, and enjoyed it a lot. However, I never learned a song the whole way through. I'd mess up each time I'd play and I started to feel like I was incompetent. I always played quietly in my room because I abhorred the fact that my parents could possibly hear me playing the same thing again and again and still mess up.
Then in high school I started doing double bass as well. The fact that it was a new instrument allowed me the freedom of messing up because, hey, it was a new instrument. Now I am taking lessons in college and I'm starting to feel the oppression of perfectionism again. Like, I constantly compare myself to others during practice. I wonder how easy/hard it is for other people, and whether I am going at a ridiculously slow pace, and whether I'm just simply incompetent. I hate the fact that people can hear me practicing outside the room, especially since it's obviously located at the school of music at my college.
(My father has no idea I'm taking lessons because he hates the fact that I play a musical instrument. He thinks it's distracting and destructive. My parents both always told me I wasn't talented to go into music, despite my insistence that I never planned on it anyway).
Add to this the fact that my boyfriend started playing violin like 2 years ago and has already resolved that he wants to be a music major. He's extremely talented at it. I used to know more about theory than him and now it's completely the reverse. I resent him when he talks about classical music because I feel like I have nothing of value to contribute, and I never want to play with him because my level is substandard. It's gone so far as I feel like music is his thing, and I feel like I'm trespassing his domain when I play or practice or learn new stuff.
Obviously, this fucking sucks. I've never really voiced this before so yeah, pretty emotionally charged. But I have so much shit cluttering my head that I start to wonder if I should just quit or not. I just want to make sense of all of this because music has so much baggage for me. When I enjoy it it's thrilling. I know I would regret quitting. I want to create something beautiful and to play beautifully. But the mental constipation is hilariously distracting to my goal.
Thanks if you read this wall of text. I just really want some insight. What's the root of this? How are the factors all playing together? Why can't I drop this attitude? Does the fact that I must ask if this is right for me intrinsically indicate it is not, in fact, right for me (which is a terrifying concept)? I'm thinking of taking this issue to my school's counselor but I don't know if that's overly dramatic or not.
Cheers.