Pallas This is right up there with the nicests posts in forums, showing real people conveying very genuine thoughts about life, music, piano, learning, developing, passion etc .... explaining it in the nicest of ways.
Recently ... in a John Mortensen vid, he really did touch on certain stresses ... mental type stress, and probably accurately labeled performance related stress in the memorisation department is 'sick' in some ways. As in how some people are really impacted significantly sometimes in significant ways ... negatively. Significant pressures put on them by circumstances.
It is known that pressures, deadlines, or knowing it is make or break that can lead to amazing break throughs in performance, progress, technology etc. This happens a lot in society.
I did have certain pressures too in the earliest stages of learning piano and music. But ... for a relatively long time now, no more pressures. And I only focus on enjoying learning playing piano and music theory/techniques etc at own rate.
There are so much go-to sources out there these days to keep us occupied forever. A few nice sources I use are these ones on youtube.
Jazer Lee, Mangold Project, cedarvillemusic, ben hilton, music matters, livingpianosvideos, Piano With Jonny, Michael New, NewJazz (which does teach interesting hand techniques), Annique Goettler.
And of course ... listening to lots of music of various sorts, where the people that wrote the music can directly or indirectly teach us amazing things, from which we can apply and use all the accumulated (and accumulating) knowledge for good cause (music) and for us ourselves to enjoy.
I can understand the work and pressures that the professionals and others that constantly need to prepare. Full credit to them in their hard work and effort. Also full credit to the good people at all levels that are into music and piano etc, and a lot of good ones are here at PTell.
I think that ... regardless of professional or amateur piano player, the various areas indicated in your opening post are super helpful and super meaningful. Excellent post Pallas.