Whoa! Easy now!

CAPTION: "Okay now let's see that pretty smile."

 

I keep in touch with a lot of my former students just getting underway in their chosen careers. Lately I've been hearing some desperate concerns that some of them have yet to reach the pinnacles of their professions. Some wonder if they've made wrong choices and now face a life of senseless failure. Poppycock!

But you know something? It's not their fault. I'm mad at my generation of educators. We keep telling students they have to be dead serious about their futures and their careers. Why? Where's the fun in that?

Let's get personal. I'm back to teaching myself to draw and play the piano again. Both activities are full of self realization. I find myself turning to heaven based mentors for my growth.

The drawing? Picasso is my man! I've discovered that no amount of self training is going to teach me to draw accurate proportions, and some details.  Like the picture up there I just finished? She didn't look that bad until I decided to give her some teeth. I clearly don't do teeth. Picasso says I don't need to do teeth.

Piano? Give me that comic empressario Victor Borge. I've been noticing in that retrospective of Victor they keep showing on PBS? He never finishes a piece. He falls off his chair a lot, and sometimes plays with his feet. And he enjoys his performance immensely. THAT's ME!

I've been at this piano thing four months now, and have a repertoire of about 20 pieces? But none of them are more than 10 measures long. And I can play one of them with my knuckles. There will be no need for an intermission at my recital. You could work it in on a commercial break.

There isn't a huge point to this journal entry, but a point there is. I have no desire to be an heroic role model to younger persons. I just want them to know I've already survived changing careers seven times. And I've never allowed myself to stop being interested in trying something new. And I guess the most important adjunct to all this babble, is that I have no regrets, I've enjoyed it all.

Last school year the words came to me in a message I received in my sleep from Victor and Pablo. 

"UNLESS IT LEADS TO DEATH OR TEN YEARS TO LIFE IN PRISON? AT YOUR AGE (ANY AGE), YOU CAN'T MAKE A BAD DECISION?"

Well that's it. That's what I wanted to get off my pecs. (Oh, you need to know I was made to feel the same way at your age.) 

For the record? I'm going to keep working on teeth. But if they never come? Eh? So what!