Personal Growth

For those of you who know me, you know that I love music.  I love playing it, I love listening to it, I love music talk.  I sang choir in high school and we even made it all the way to Carnegie Hall in New York City.  I've played the violin since 5th grade, and played in Missouri, California, Utah, and all over Idaho.  But I have a secret.  Something that doesn't quite make sense if you look at all my performing experience.  I get stage fright.  Bad.  I've tried to get over it and take in every suggestion people have told me, but none of it really works.

When I'm performing with a group, I don't really feel nervous at all.  I get excited and happy.  But when I have to perform by myself or when I have an important part, I get nervous.  Not just butterflies in my stomach nervous, but palms sweaty, stomach-achy, shaky, feel like I'm going to faint nervous.  I remember the first time I performed on my violin in public.  It was at my sisters high school senior recital and I was probably 11 or 12.  I was playing my violin (I was playing because she was my teacher at the time) and the song I was playing was pretty easy.  But I got nervous and couldn't read the notes on the page.  You learn later that when you mess up, you're supposed to keep going, but I couldn't.  I kept trying to play that one note right, and I couldn't.  Lisa had to stop playing the accompaniment and tell me what note it was.  I was so embarrassed. 

I took private violin lessons for years, and I hated it every week.  Not because I wasn't prepared, I could always play it great at home, but because it made me so nervous to be stuck in a room with my teacher for a whole hour.  And all of the stuff I could play perfectly at home would sound like garbage.  I would start stressing about my lesson days in advance.  And that was every single week.

Even in church, where nobody cares what you play, I freak out.  When I sing, my legs lose all feeling and I feel like I'm going to pass out.  When I play my violin, I shake so bad my fingers can't play the notes and I can't pull the bow across the string.  So a couple of years ago when David and I were dating and they called me to be the ward pianist and play in sacrament meeting, I thought I was going to die.  I was recently given that calling in our ward too.  I told David today that the calling I have now scares me the most out of any calling I could've gotten. 

About a month ago I was supposed to play in church.  The girl who picks the hymns didn't tell me what they were till the night before so I didn't have hardly any time to practice. And the hymns weren't the easiest.  So I went to church an hour and a half early and I practiced.  When church started, there was maybe half the chapel filled.  After the bishop finished with announcements, they had opened the overflow.  I was shaking even before I started.  It was bad.  I messed up a lot and even stopped playing at one point.  I wanted to leave the room and cry because I was so embarrassed.  But I stuck it out and had a lot of people tell me how good I did and how I'm doing much better than they could ever do.  That didn't really help, it just told me they really noticed how bad I did.

This story does end happy, though.  I play in the Idaho Falls Symphony.  It's the highlight of my week.  I love playing in it.  Our first concert of the season was yesterday.  When we had our first rehearsal, I was supposed to be sitting 2nd chair, 2nd violin.  When I got to rehearsal, they told me I would be sitting first chair because the principle had to drop out.  I was shocked.  I'm a good player, but not really a principle type.  So I was nervous.  And I didn't do so well that first night.  Partly because I wasn't super prepared and partly because I was so nervous.  Then the conductor came up to me and told me that one of the pieces we would be doing with the soloist also had a 2nd violin solo.  And I was going to play it.  I thought I was going to die from shock.  I kept making little, stupid mistakes when we had rehearsal so I thought for sure I would die in the concert. 

So yesterday, at our Symphony Hoe-Down concert, when Ashokan Farewell came up, I played.  And I played well.  Not amazing, but well.  I did it.  I played in a concert with tons of people watching, and I didn't choke.  After my solo part was done and the rest of the section came in, I thought I really was going to pass out, but I did it.  David said you could hardly hear me because we were playing in an outdoor setting and we weren't miked well, but I don't care.  I'm proud of myself.  I did something I didn't think I could do.  I am so proud of myself because I made it.  Little steps.  Little steps over 15 years.  I don't feel comfortable with all of that yet, but I'm working on it.  Maybe someday I'll be like Lisa or David and won't have to deal with stage fright at all!  But not yet.  I'll take my victories which may be small to other people, but they are big to me.