After going through this immense change, I thought I would be one hundred percent ready for what’s about to come, but you already know that I wasn’t. The question: What is your practice and how can you find your place in it?” lead to a series of questions that needed to be answered first. These questions helped me look into the right places inside of me, however, because of this huge change that I had, I was discovering a lot of new things about me. These were very intense times of brainstorming and deep questioning. I only remember them as being meaningful and filled with curiosity but, as the deadline got closer and closer, I began to really pressure myself to answer this question and it felt like the more I tried, the harder it would get. I could not understand why this was happening, but I still needed to do an essay about it and I decided to do my essay on my interests, inspirations, and why they interest me. While I was writing the essay I noticed that I had to brainstorm and ask myself lots of questions to explain why these artists, genres and topics interested me and why they inspired me, the more I wrote the clearer the patterns became. I began to understand a lot about the styles of music I am gravitated towards and why I gravitate towards them. I understand that I am into music that has happy, relaxing, organic and spacial timbres (sounds that are based off of outer space), and also genres such as, Dance, IDM, Disco, Funk, French house, Pop and many others. Although this was very good progress, it was still difficult to define a field that I would feel comfortable with.
Once I finished the essay, it felt like I had cheated because I handed in something that didn’t really answer the main question, but at the same time I got to learn a lot about myself which I imagine that it was one of the goals of this assignment which I'm thankful for. However, there was still another semester to go and this time it really hit hard on me.
For the second semester, I didn't have to write an essay, this time, I had to write this blog and most importantly I had put in practice what “I said” my practice was; at that moment I did not know how to react, I have to be honest. I felt pressure right from the start and although I knew my classes would help me figure it out, the pressure I began to put on myself was difficult and overwhelming. One of the main reasons why it was difficult and overwhelming was because I began to overthink everything I would do related to music. The issue that came with overthinking was that everything that I would do when I would go into the studio, I would ask myself “Is this what I want to dedicate my life to?”. This question isn’t necessarily bad, but in this situation it was scary and there was even a point where I did not want to do anything related to music because I would only think of this question while I was doing something related to music. I stopped living in the present and I would constantly get preoccupied with the future, at some points, anxiety would kick in, and I am not a person that gets anxious at all so when I realized that I was getting anxious and uninspired I had to take a step back and ask myself “what the hell is going on?”, I needed to do something and obviously I needed to stop asking this same question over and over again. That’s when I began changing my bad habits into good habits, because if I stayed as I was, I know I would keep overthinking more and get into a loop of bad habits that become self-harming, and develop a weak mindset filled with procrastination, and… no. No thanks. I don't want that. I’m better than that, plus, that behavior ain’t gonna help me with my school projects whatsoever.
Artwork by Luvz