18 Days Left: focused parts of 1st movement
18 days left feels like so little time, but also I have never focused this hard before (except maybe when I played the Schumann Piano Quintet in college; looking back I can't believe I got it to performance level in one semester) and I've literally been clearing up days on my schedule so that I can practice! I don't think I could have played this piece when I was working full time. I have also never changed my sleep schedule to improve my focus. I got an acceptable amount of sleep last night and it feels so great to actually see progress happening again! I have a friend who is a medical student who said that the practice you do when you're tired isn't fully lost, it just gets processed by your brain later. I am so relieved to hear that.
I practiced about 3 hours today and worked specifically on the stuff that was giving me trouble: I changed a bunch of fingerings and did slow practice and also playing chord transitions. Today I'm really feeling on track, at least for this movement, though I get kind-of embarrassed when stuff that was fine during practice suddenly isn't the minute I hit record, but that's ok, it's all part of the process. And every session gets a little bit easier and the music is feeling more intuitive under my fingers!
After today I'm going to do alternate days of working on the 1st movement to follow Dr. Gebrian's schedule, so tomorrow I'll probably do some work on the 2nd movement since that's the most neglected one at the moment.