Posted by:
Mother Who Knows
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Date: January 26, 2020 04:15PM
Thanks for this article, Susan I/S!
I'm too perfectionistic to be a knitter or sewer. Circumstances have forced me to sew, and I was terrible at it. It would drive me nuts, to have to undo hours or days of work. I admire sewers (I mean, those who sew).
Typing is fun for me, too. Once, I took a temporary work-at-home job, which was basically data entry, based on speed, with no thinking involved. At first, I did OK, I couldn't answer the doorbell or phone, or take a bathroom break, because log-outs were a black mark on our evaluation. I was being micromanaged, and I like to be in charge. I had to tell the kids to not interrupt me, for those hours. I typed alone, behind a locked door. After a few weeks, I could feel my mind start to unravel. I started making mistakes, cried a lot, and became irritated with the kids. The non-stop repetition and the constant pressure had worn me down. I quit the job, and the supervisors said, "Yeah, we have a lot of burn-out in this job." I admire Cl2!
I need to be creative and flexible and free. (Cl2 is all that on RFM, so, really, it's different than her regular work.) My regular career offers all of that. I'm the boss, I work with great (non-Mormon) people, the hours are flexible enough, I can power through when I'm sick, do about 1/4 of the work from home. Whenever I took work home, my kids could interrupt me, and I could always stop, and smile and say, "Yes, what do you need, Sweetheart?"
Besides family and work, my passion is music. I love the joy of it, and the self-expression. I love the learning process, and took lessons from age 5 to 25, and organ lessons, too. I taught piano when I was a SAHM. Piano boosts confidence and self-esteem, and improves grades in kids. I did not enjoy playing for the road shows and sacrament meeting performers--it was all that repetition, again. Repetition is huge in Mormonism. Accompanying the ward and stake choirs took me away from my family at Christmas time, and on Saturday and Sunday mornings, in addition to the usual 3 hour block. The music died for me when correllation happened, and we were told that only the Mormon church hymn-dirges and the "church sanctioned" Mormon-written stuff could be played, including for the preludes and postludes (my favorites). When my family and I resigned from the cult, I quit playing altogether, for over 5 years. I was that burnt-out on music and the church. Our family hobbies were skiing, tennis, hiking and outdoor sports, soccer and baseball games, dancing. Now that my children have left the nest, I am back to playing the piano, but for myself, my family, and grandchildren. When I feel angry, I can I can pound out the Beethoven. WhenI need cheering up, I play Beatles and old pop songs. I like to play love songs, little kids songs, duets, jazz, rock, folk, flamboyant Chopin and Greig. I can appreciate the learning process, at my own speed, in my own time, and the eventual satisfaction. I don't have to undo anything, as it all builds upon itself. I like the perfection and mechanical precision of the Bach inventions, the concentration, and the challenge of not making any mistakes. In contrast, my favorite music at the moment is Debussey--the musical equivalent of the French Impressionist painters. It's soothing, and beautiful to me. More horizontal than the
vertical hymns.
It is interesting to read an article that touched on WHY music soothes away my anxiety. Probably a hobby needs to be engaging or complex enough to take the focus off of your problems. Music puts me into "flow", as does skiing. with skiing, if you don't focus, you could break your leg, and it is exciting, aerobic, and the scenery is beautiful. Skiing is my own personal cure for sorrow, and is actually cheaper than therapy. You would think the scari-ness of careening down a mountain would create anxiety, but it actually dissipates that free-flowing type of anxiety that is so disabling. I hum with joy, and smile until my teeth freeze.
When I sit down at the piano, often hours will go by, without my realizing it. It used to be like that on the organ, in that old stake house with that amazing German open-pipe organ, which the wealthy stake had assembled piece by piece into the building that was built around it, like a giant wooden acoustical music box. Back in the organ's day, Mormon stakes could keep the money they raised themselves, to use for whatever purpose they saw fit. We lived only one block from the stake house, and I had the keys. I would practice at night, after the kids were asleep, and sometimes it would be 3:00 am, and I wouldn't even know it. That's flow!
It's variety I crave. I would (and did) go nuts if I were limited to only one type of music, or only one composer.