A whole lot better

January finally drips to an end. It's my least favourite month and I swear it's a good week longer than any other in the calendar: it just drags and drags. I've managed to play every day, except the day we had people over to dinner, and the day we saw the Gloaming. Tack on the days I did at the end of December and that's a fair amount of playing.

Oddly I don't feel as though I've played much at all, and apart from getting comfortable with the A again I don't feel I've moved on at all. In fact, the evidence of my play list suggests I'm going steadily backwards.

I've been further disheartened by a fellow musician, who is, it seems to me, competent enough over what seems to be a smallish repertoire. I originally supposed he'd not been learning for long, but recently found he'd been playing over 10 years. My second theory was that he'd had time, a lot of time - a year or so here or there - during that ten when he hadn't played. Nope. My final assumption was that of course he plays, but perhaps just once week or maybe not so often. Wrong again: apparently he practices for an hour every day.

So I got to thinking that if I could find an hour a day to play for another seven and a half years I'd be as good as this person. And I know that these things aren't very measurable, but to my mind that would be quite a small bit better, rather than a whole lot better. An hour a day for seven and a half years to get a small bit better? It's not an attractive proposition. It makes me feel as though I am wasting my time, because it isn't possible to be as good as I want to be, or even to be a whole lot better.

It's the January blues: things will get better, I'm sure they will.