Doing the maths

I'm not keen on numbers. I have some knitting which is very close to being finished, but which will sit in my my project bag until I get desperate for it, because it requires some simple counting and calculation. Somehow whenever I think of it I find a million other things I'd rather be doing: cleaning the loo, sweeping the fluff from under the sofas...

In a slack period at work today it occurred to me that with a little simple maths I could work out how long I've spent playing pipes, and therefore how far off those fabled 10,000 hours I am. I have 182 posts on this blog. Not every one is tied to a time when I've played, but that's balanced by those times I've played and not blogged. I thought I could take an average of 20 minutes playing time per session. When I first began I couldn't play for long without exhausting myself. Sometimes I do just grab 10 minutes, and sometimes I have my pipes out for an hour or more, but that will include a lot of updating the blog, recording, hunting for tunes, making tea, and won't represent solid playing time. So 20 minutes x 182 blog posts is 3640 minutes, which is (drum roll....fade out) Yes, that's right, a poxy 60 hours. 60 hours over 18 months. I've probably spent more time cleaning my teeth.

Initially I found this very depressing: here am I, hoping to play well, therefore hoping to hit 10,000 hours playing time, and after a year and a half I've still only managed 60 hours. At that rate it's going to take me 250 years to get to 10,000, and even looking at the most optimistic lifespan predictions I may as well give up here and now.

However: I thought again. I've got all this way: memorising tunes, playing recognisable, tuneful tunes that people are happy to listen to and join in with, and I've done all this in just 60 hours. That's only the equivalent of a week and half at work. Think how much further I could get in the next 60 hours! So, it's the same old refrain here: I must practise more.

I played this evening after a trip to the allotment. My hands were too cold, and even when they warmed up they weren't supple enough. Ran through several tunes, but my hands got tighter so I gave up, having added less than 15 minutes to my total playing time...