A Colorful Life

I reflect on my childhood...well, basically a bunch of the time.

My childhood was filled with and incredible number of options for activities, lessons and experiences.  Basically unlimited...which allowed me to do ballet, tap, disco, belly dance, piano, recorder, french horn, trumpet, acting, and on and on.  The richness of it all was wonderful, the fact that much of the time it was two or three or four of these things all happening at the same time in my life was overwhelming.  I didn't know it at the time, though, it was simply my normal.

During different periods of my adult life I've felt incredibly frustrated by and resentful of this, felt that I learned to be mediocre at a everything (with the exception of french horn...I absolutely excelled with it...but then I quit in high school).  Now I look back and see that I was afforded a huge array of experiences which made for a truly rich childhood.  I now know that mediocrity is absolutely OK, excelling is unnecessary, but a nice bonus, particularly when it's purely accidental.

Anyway, I thank my mom for her obsessive quest for finding classes, schlepping me around, listening to me complain, and nagging me to practice, practice, practice.  My dad gets credit here, too, for financing all of it and he definitely did his share of nagging, too.

So now I still lead a colorful life.  I don't do too many things at once any more.  I take lessons sequentially, not all at the same time.  I am still mediocre at most everything, and I love being OK with that.