Your Dreams for 2025

I have an aversion to anything resembling a new year's resolution - too many failures in the distant past.

However, I have recently identified one goal for myself, again...

Pallas I've learned that the most critical skills I need to learn in order to be better at piano are the mental skills:

Ditto. I'm currently making my 6th (? or is it 60th?) attempt to get into meditation/mindfulness. I'm certain this habit would help me at the piano (and in many other areas of my life). Just having trouble making it a habit. I'm a whole week into it this time though, and I haven't let it drop off my radar yet.

I guess my other current goal is to work through my huge collection of scores in ForScore and get it organized in some fashion. I keep running across books or pieces that I totally forgot I had. I just dump them in there, sightread, and then add more every week or two. I need to get better about tagging/sorting them right off the bat.

@Pallas What a nice post. I'm rather envious of your ability to know what you want and to convey all that so clearly.

As far as piano playing goes, I don't really have any goals beyond writing down things to work on next, like do pg 48 in Book1, pg 54 in Book2, etc. Mainly just to keep track of where I am.

I feel like I'm pretty self-motivated, but I do like accountability and challenge threads. I think because they make me feel less alone, though maybe by their nature they are motivational in some respect.

As far as wishes go... I will say that I am very excited about learning the piano right now, to the point where I've been neglecting my other hobbies. So I do wish to strike a better balance with my time in that regard.

Best wishes to all in this new year!!

I would say I need to figure out what the piano means in my life by the end of this year...

JB_PT I guess my other current goal is to work through my huge collection of scores in ForScore and get it organized in some fashion. I keep running across books or pieces that I totally forgot I had. I just dump them in there, sightread, and then add more every week or two. I need to get better about tagging/sorting them right off the bat.

That sounds like a great goal. I'm in the same category - nothing is consistent with how I title and tag things. It would be nice if ForScore used AI to do that work for me!

I love this thread! I may come back and add more, but this:

Pallas I have a need for community

Yes! I’ve posted before about finding a cello friend… unfortunately our schedules don’t link up often, although I’m confident we’ll keep playing together, I would like a little more regular musical companionship….

I would love to have another string player to play with. And I’d love to have some friends who would come over and we could take turns playing for each other….

I will keep searching, I really do want to develop a community of music friends.

Oh, another one is more regularly record and share recordings… I need to figure out a way to make this happen without it taking up a huge amount of time, because often my practice time on any given day can be quite restricted…

Maybe recording can become a Sunday morning routine…

ranjit like @Pallas I’m curious about this too.

I started piano when I was 29 years old. After I had been playing piano for about 9 years, I decided to change my career. We would move from Japan to the U.S. and I would go back to school to get an MA and PhD (not related to music). I knew the time commitment of being a student and completely changing my career would be significant. But at some point — I don’t remember if it was in the preparatory process or in the first few semesters of grad school, I was able to articulate for myself that I wanted piano to be a part of my daily life and I didn’t want to get to the end of grad school and find I hadn’t touched a piano for 7 years. So I figured out how to make that happen, and I have been playing piano ever since, through grad school, position 1 and moving and now position 2 etc.

Somehow though, I don’t think that’s what you mean @ranjit

Are you thinking of making a change toward some professional piano pursuit, for example?

I'm still in the process of updating my piano intentions for 2025.

The classical oriented intentions are pretty straight forward.

I'd really like to finish Piano Adventures level 5, as it would free up 15 minutes of practice time for either other piano things or other hobbies. I thought this one would be easy, but I started Unit 1 out of 6 Units back in September and I'm still on Unit 1. So this one may or may not happen.

Also classical oriented is working through as much piano exam grade 4 repertoire and technical requirements that I can manage during the year.

Pallas I have need for enjoyment. I love all kinds of music, but my favorite genre is arrangements of film scores for solo piano.

I think that has become my new favorite music genre also. It used to be jazz and I still like jazz a lot. Unlike classical pieces, neither of those genres lend themselves to a straight forward learning progression because they're arrangements. I'm in the no-man's land of beyond 'easy piano' arrangements where I can only give something my best guess if I'll be able to play it. Working my way up through graded piano exam literature is one way I can prepare for some of the nicer arrangements (I have champagne taste with beer skills).

Kaydia As far as wishes go... I will say that I am very excited about learning the piano right now, to the point where I've been neglecting my other hobbies. So I do wish to strike a better balance with my time in that regard.

I can relate! I still have some weeds as tall as me in my backyard garden and half a bookcase of garden books that I haven't been reading.

Pallas So. Much. Therapy. It only took me 10 years to figure this stuff out. Hopefully, I start learning a little faster at some point. Probably not though. I think I'm stuck in the turtle lane.

Kudos on your personal growth! And, for what it's worth, you're not alone in feeling like you're in the Turtle Lane.

Pallas Thank you, knowing that I'm not alone in it means a lot! Best wishes to you too.

Kaydia I'm mostly watching piano-related videos lately. But I hear the videos related to my other hobbies calling me. Help!

Same

Kaydia ... to the point where I've been neglecting my other hobbies.

This rings so true.

Pallas My husband and I have devoted an entire floor of a 3-story house to our hobbies. One and a half floors, if I'm honest

So much room sounds lovely. I have must of my stuff crammed into my computer room. But it's just me so not so bad.

Pallas But piano has stepped to the front, and the other stuff is languishing. I refuse to feel guilty about that though. For everything there is a season.

I hear what you're saying. I'm fine with some sitting idle for now (like sewing). But some hobbies, such as drawing, can languish to the point where one needs to relearn their skills. Those are the ones that are calling the loudest.

Pallas I DO feel guilty. But I'm TRYING not to, because guilt doesn't solve anything

That's right! Guilt doesn't solve anything. So stop feeling guilty! Easier said than done, I know.

The most recent hobby I picked up (other than piano) was painting with watercolors. I started that late last summer. The last piece I did was a page of doodles to practice various techniques. My profile picture shows part of that page. I'm hoping that as I see it when I'm online here, it will inspire me to get back to it. I'm sure it will. Annnny moment now.

Now, to get back on topic... > Pallas Got some dreams?

I may have mentioned this in the Alfred's thread, that I would love to one day be able to take piano lessons. I'm fine with self-learning for now. But eventually, I'd love to have a teacher. So I'll be dreaming about/ hoping that I can make that happen this year.

On the topic of hobbies…

I used to do Aikido (a Japanese martial art). When I started piano, I had been doing aikido for probably 7+ years. I had a black belt, I sometimes taught classes, and I met my husband through aikido, so we generally went to practice together etc.

After I started learning piano, at some point, I started to notice that as we would be leaving the house to go to the dojo, what I really wanted to do was stay home and practice the piano. I worked full time (then as now) and so time is always limited. Eventually, I was skipping more and more aikido practices for piano, and I decided to “take a break” from aikido. I never went to practice again after that.

I still work full time, so my free time is limited by that. Over the years, there have been other things I’d like to do, and other instruments I’d like to learn, but in the end, I always decide that piano takes priority and I realize I can’t pursue more than one hobby. I’m ok with that. The only thing I’ve managed to do with any consistency besides piano is make time for exercise, but I didn’t see that as a hobby so much as a health maintenance thing.

For those of you who are retired, I’ll let you all decide whether or how you can have more than one hobby.

But for those of us not retired, then there are many more restrictions on our time, and I think it’s ok to just pick one hobby.

Or if you can make it work with your schedule, have more than one hobby and be ok with possibly slower progress but more activities.

I think your heart tells you how you want to be spending your time. Mine did, and does.