All posts by hannahviolin

I am a violinist. I also enjoy running, working out, reading, and hanging with my friends and cat.
Random thoughts

Playing Ketchup

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This year I decided to take an additional week off teaching over the Christmas break. Some of my more conscientious students were worried, but I felt due to how busy my fall semester had been and due to some remodeling projects at home I would need the extra week. What I didn’t think about was how I’d need the extra week just to catch up on emails and phone calls! This is only a slight exaggeration. Slight in that I have done neither of those things. I probably have voicemails on my phone from before Christmas that I need to return. (If you called and I haven’t called back, I’m so sorry! I was working so hard, and then I needed a break, and now I’m working on getting back to people slowly. Feel free to call again!)

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Here’s another order of “business”: we got our CD’s in December and I didn’t tell you guys! If you want one, I can sell them to you for $20 with shipping and handling or $15 hand delivered. All of the proceeds go to the St Luke’s Life and Hope Fund, which helped my friend Jen out when she was going through her breast cancer treatments. We’ve already donated over $800 to the fund and have more CD’s to sell. You can pay via credit card and I’ll cover the fees, so just contact me if you are interested! Hannahviolin at gmail dot com. It’s a live recording of our recital together in October, and once they are gone, they are gone!

Fun stuff. I’ve decided to do one of those photo a day challenges on instagram. So far so good. I feel the urge to do interesting things in order to take photos of them. That’s probably a good side effect but might get exhausting. (I’m hannahviolin).

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I like to think of looking back over the year and seeing a picture from each day though. Seems like fun. And I haven’t even used any cat pictures yet, unbelievably.

I mentioned a bathroom remodel. Here’s some awesome wallpaper that was uncovered!

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And a horrific mold situation that is, yes, gone now, so don’t worry.

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I’m going through some photos I might not have shared with you 🙂

Cinnamon rolls for Christmas.

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Sad that I had to go to work on Christmas Eve.

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One of my new year’s “resolutions” (I used quotes because I didn’t type up and laminate them) was to try to blog more regularly. I like the outlet social media and blogging gives me and I feel more connected to people through those things. I also like feeling creative and writing helps with that. So maybe you’ll see more of me in this space this year.

Deep Thoughts

New Year, Same Me

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Happy New Year!

I haven’t blogged for some time and you’ve all probably been wondering, gosh, what on earth is Hannah up to? And I could tell you everything, but the truth is, Hannah has just been busy. Good busy though, mostly, finishing up the Christmas season with shows and concerts and gigs, doing things with loved ones, celebrating the new year, all of those wonderful things.

I wrote this status update on Facebook as my year in review and I’ll copy/paste it here for you.

“If I were a better blogger I’d have done a year-end recap. I didn’t do a Christmas letter either: I’ll just do it here–

I played a bunch of quartet concerts, joined a band, played opera, a recital with solo Bach and put out a CD. I traveled to Phoenix, Philadelphia, Nashville, Chattanooga, Chicago, El Paso and more. I moved and now live with two cats and a dog. I became an aunt to the world’s cutest niece. I got to see my youngest sibling graduate from college and can’t believe we are finally all grown up! I read a bunch of books, watched a variety of television shows, a few movies, ate at some good restaurants and some not-so-good ones. I hiked, sometimes longer than planned, I ran, I lifted a few weights, I ate some great food at home, drank some good wine, stayed up too late on occasion, and tried to be a decent friend.

Now I’m getting ready to put on my party dress and my party shoes and celebrate the coming of 2015. This year was okay. There’s no point in rehashing the crappy parts of the year, because I’m not looking to remind myself of those (though finalizing a divorce is really a good thing, I think!) I’m focusing on the good stuff, and looking forward to ringing in the new year with my loved one(s).

Here’s to all of you that made the year tolerable, that made the year special, that helped me up when I was down, and who were there in spirit when you couldn’t be in person! I wouldn’t have wanted to do it alone.”

So what are my plans for 2015?

Music wise, I want to keep doing more. Musically, I haven’t been this satisfied in years! I want to continue to push and challenge myself and grow as a musician beyond the narrow mindset of “I’m a failure since I don’t have an orchestra job” that has plagued me for years. 2014 helped me grow as a musician in ways that I could never have imagined, between playing with Jen, the Perseid Quartet, the Illumine Ensemble, and the TSO tribute band.

Teaching wise, I need to stay on top of things better and continue to grow. I might be able to swing a Suzuki Institute this summer and get inspiration and fresh ideas! I am pretty aware of my strengths and weaknesses as a teacher and I want to obviously change those weaknesses into things I’m less weak at.

Personally: I want to try to be a better girlfriend, friend, daughter, aunt (!!!), and sister, to be more patient and listen more, and perhaps interrupt a bit less. I’m becoming more aware of some of my personal limitations (group travel is the worst—I literally cannot deal with groups of people for very long and I can become very unpleasant) and I want to work on dealing with my limitations better at least, especially when situations are unavoidable. I want to keep traveling and exploring the world, and I want to give back as much as I can. (Our CD sales have raised around $800 so far for the St Luke’s Life and Hope Fund and we have more copies to sell!)

Sometimes I am struck by how incredibly resilient I am in the face of difficulty, yet other times I am struck by how incredibly lucky I am. I suppose most of us feel this way. Like I said in my facebook status update, basically, THANKS for being there for me. Whether or not I was there for you. Let’s make 2015 an even better year together.

Travel

Traveling

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I haven’t been a world traveler as much as other people I know…no summers in Europe traipsing about, but I do like to travel, and I especially hate staying in one place for too long.

That’s a metaphor too. And a joke, of course, but whatever. Most of what I write is at least 72 percent facetious.

It’s tricky, getting divorced. Are you allowed to talk about it with people? Are you allowed to look back on things you did together and think fondly on them? Do you just throw away everything that happened in your life beforehand and start over? I think different people do it differently, of course.

For instance, while I was married we took a wonderful trip to Paris. Since my marriage ended does that mean I can’t look back fondly on Paris? I’d say heck, no, because the end of my marriage brought me enough pain, let’s not also sear out all the good things that happened!

If I were a real blogger I’d do a post looking for page views, entitled something like “5 can’t miss things to do in Paris” or “How to find a good hotel in Paris” or “How to dress in all black like we are told the Parisians do” but I’m not doing that. (Or I will say that you can get a hotel here or read about Paris fashion here.) I’m just sitting here on my couch after spending a day in Warrenton with the band and another day in St Peters and wishing I could go somewhere other than Missouri or Illinois (which is right across the river from St Louis, in case you weren’t aware, which I wasn’t until I moved here…)…and that naturally makes me think of Paris. Since that was my most recent, and most substantial adult trip abroad. And I loved every second of it and I want to go back someday.

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That’s me in front of the Eiffel Tower, in case you weren’t sure.

Things to love about Paris: cheese, wine, the metro, people watching, and loads of history around every corner. It’s an amazing city and I’m sure spending years there wouldn’t be enough. But I’ll settle for another week or less someday.

Things to love about having been married: being able to kill a conversation by mentioning your divorce, occasionally remembering the good times and that you did, once, love that person enough to get married to them, and then, well, if you did anything super awesome, don’t throw out the baby with the bathwater. Life is long, life goes on, and sometimes memories are what get you through a long week.

Random thoughts

Finding your joy

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The holiday season is upon on us, and if retailers and the media are to be believed we need to go and show our love for our friends and family by buying them tons of stuff! And also buying stuff for ourselves, because surely we don’t have enough!

But I live in a house full of stuff. Too much stuff, in fact, that I can’t figure out where to put it…stuff to give away, stuff to use, stuff that I want to hang onto “just in case”…I don’t need more stuff. And I realized the other day I’m in a (I guess!) “lucky” situation in that I don’t have to buy stuff for anybody else either! I mean, sure, I’d like to get some gifts for my parents and boyfriend just because I don’t want them to think I don’t care, but I don’t have a long list of people I “need” to buy for, because the people I spend time with and care the most about don’t care about stuff either. Or we DO but we buy what we need when we need it, or when we can afford it, and manage to do without the rest. It’s kind of nice, and refreshing, and makes me feel good. I won’t deny that I love a random surprise gift, to know that somebody thought of me (I love gifts from students!) but it isn’t that important. Or maybe we are all in the same boat? I doubt it, because I don’t care about the new iPhone, or getting a new car, or what brand of anything I’m wearing or carrying, or really what people think of me if most of my wardrobe is cheap clothes from Target, and my impression is certainly that a whole lot of people care about those things!

But I digress.

The holiday season is a busy time. Especially for we musicians, who tend to work our butts off providing all kinds of holiday cheer for you fine people. You’re welcome. It’s fun though. I don’t want a Christmas without cheesy Christmas music, do you? (Don’t answer that.) This season for me is dedicated to the show I’m doing on electric violin—we were, in fact, on TV Friday morning. There’s video, and here’s the link. Check it out! Don’t laugh 😉

I think, for a classically trained Suzuki kid who really can’t dance, I do pretty okay rocking out, playing by ear, by memory, and with others. I don’t know what the next step with my electric violin will be, if anything, but it’s been an adventure. A tiring adventure to be sure, but it’s been different.

Sometimes I get crabby. I know last week I put up a few posts that made people think I was feeling down. I don’t know—maybe I was, maybe I wasn’t. A friend in the band suggested that we need to take what makes us happy and focus on that, to “find your joy” in your life and daily activities.

Today my joy is a bunch of things. Watching my cat play with a stuffed shrimp toy (omg, this sort of thing truly cracks me up!). Going for a run in the fairly mild weather we’re having. Wearing a bright red sweater. Texting with Leslie. Trying to decide what adorable thing to buy my niece for Christmas (not out of obligation but because I want to!) Planning some Christmas baking (cinnamon rolls, shortbread cookies). Looking forward to cuddling on the couch later and watching Dr Who (I have become absolutely obsessed with the show…). It’s easy to get overwhelmed with life and focus on negative things (student loans! tiny retirement accounts! too much junk/the house is dirty! too busy!) and harder to focus on positive things, but it’s important to keep working on my mindset.

In the meantime, here are some photos that my friend April took at our performance on Friday night. It was a fun show! And as a side note, I think it’s okay to be crabby occasionally 🙂

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This is one of those weeks where I look at the calendar and think I must be crazy. April and I are throwing a “cookie exchange party” Friday and I’m planning my part of it. That includes baking cookies at some point, though I have a good recipe picked out! And making a cheese ball, and something else too probably. My quartet is playing for a composition class tomorrow, I’m getting my CD’s on Wednesday from Jen (woo hoo!) and the band has three shows this week. There’s only about two more weeks of teaching though (really, two weeks and part of a day) though those are five day weeks. Louie finishes up in two weeks too, and we’ve both been really busy and stressed out, and I’m SO looking forward to him being done with the semester so he can relax too.

One last thing, in this random post of everything…really a brain dump I guess…does anybody have any good book recommendations? I’m in the middle of a few non fiction right now but would love to find a great fiction book (or series.) Nothing too sci-fi or dystopian please.

Random thoughts

Holidays

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So I realized after getting a few comments on my post yesterday that I might have come across a little bit sadder than I actually felt. But I SO appreciate it. It’s easy to forget that everybody goes through the same things! And part of trying to improve as a teacher, musician, and person is recognizing weaknesses…if we all thought we were perfect already we’d just get lazy, right?

I’m enjoying listening to some music lately. My quartet is learning Borodin’s Quartet no. 2 and I’m working on the Ravel and Franck Violin Sonatas with Jen and I’m really taking this morning to listen (and last night after I blogged) and learn from greater musicians than myself. I love how much music there is out there in the world, and that as I grow older I continue to learn new things. I started thinking about how much more of a performing life I have ahead of me (hopefully!) and how much more great music I hope to learn and perform.

Oh! So my band might be on Fox 2 news this Friday morning. It’s not completed confirmed yet but looks promising. I’ll probably tweet about it… (@hannahviolin) but you should check it out! I’d say set your VCR’s…

And this Friday we are playing in St Peter’s—not too far from home.

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Speaking of! Do you young people know that people used to record shows on VCR? I was reading another blog recently that was about how Gilmore Girls is now available on Netflix, and how she was so excited because she hadn’t been able to watch them all because when you used to miss an episode, you couldn’t go online to watch it. Why no, you couldn’t, but if you were a true fan of a show you’d program your VCR to watch it. I used to live with my sister Leslie and we got really quite good about setting things up. It was especially entertaining with the antenna—you had to make sure the antenna was tuned to get good reception from the channel you wanted to record. It was harder if there were two shows on different channels and then you’d have to pick a way to set the antenna to get both channels decently. Life was hard back then! I realize there was also a time before programmable VCR’s but then you just had to rearrange your schedule around television shows or hope for reruns (which happened, and helped one out. It also helped that most shows you could miss one or two and be just fine…you didn’t-and still don’t!—have to watch them all in a row.)

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(gratuitous kitty picture)

But honestly guys. Thanks for your kind comments on my feelings post. I didn’t even know people were still reading 🙂

Deep Thoughts

Feelings

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Long time blog readers know that I am a stressed out bundle of nerves sometimes and other times I feel really great about myself. Often it’s one wrapped in the other. Occasionally it’s wrapped in bacon. Or prosciutto.

For instance, I feel like I’m a pretty great violin teacher. Except when I’m worried that I’m too easy on my students, or too hard on them, or when I’m worried that my house is a mess and all the parents are looking down on me for that, or that everybody has noticed that I gained and lost a large amount of weight over the past few years…or that my pets are too hairy, or maybe the place smells funny, or that each student is judging the one beforehand and finding them (and therefore me) lacking.

Violin playing is another thing. Some days I feel fantastic, like I can play anything. Other days I feel utterly terrible about my playing, and feel like a giant loser compared to all of the truly successful people I went to college with. Today I feel out of shape so at least I have a valid excuse, but generally I feel like I don’t work hard enough and that I am not good enough. Except when I feel like I sound pretty darn good and that thing come entirely too easy for me. It’s a toss up. A lot of the time I remind myself that I’ve made sacrifices in my career for my ex, and those were my choices at the time. And honestly, I love many of the musical activities I’m doing now, and I wouldn’t be here without a series of choices. I shouldn’t judge my own career based on how much money I make or someone’s narrow-minded view of what a musician does.

Or being a friend. I often feel like a terrible friend. I talk too much about myself and don’t ask enough questions. Or I don’t participate in the conversations enough. Or I’m not around enough or ask people to do stuff because I’m too busy…then again, they could ask me…then again how many friends does a girl need? I “lost” a lot of “friends” in my divorce, but then again, I’m using the quotes because obviously those people weren’t my real friends anyway. (I know I’ve mentioned this before, but it still burns occasionally).  Divorce is hard. Harder still is having to make all new friends. I’m sometimes surprised I’m still standing!

I probably sound a little sad or something, but honestly, I just felt like I hadn’t poured much truthiness into my blog lately, so I’m writing about something that occurred to me after I finished teaching today. So I thought I’d give you a nice dose of feelings so we can bond.

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PSA: Check your dryer for cats before starting it.