I saw a girl in a little vendor stand at a festival just the other day holding a handmade paper journal with the most curious eyes. I asked her if she planned to fill the pages with her mind and she told me she didn’t, as writing to her most often consisted of recalling her negative experiences and she didn’t wish to bring those to the surface so often. This is the case with any writer in my opinion, but it doesn’t have to end there of course.
Putting pen to paper is an act of revelation that creates the opportunity to say something you weren’t expecting to say when you picked up the pen. It’s a process that is frustrating and cathartic simultaneously…a release of demons and an affirmation of eternity. Sometimes it’s just something that needs to be done in order to get to the next page on the next day as an exercise in stability and consistency. Writing is accessible. Writing is FREE. Writing is REAL. I’ve said many times, if you want to get things done in this World, write it down, say it out loud, and then it will begin to become so. As I write this, I know it to be true. With 15,000 pages of handwritten journal entries behind me filled with thoughts and memories I could never otherwise recall, I can only wish the next 15,000 to be more of the same.

I love to teach. It’s when I learn the most. Not just about the particular subject in question, but about an individual or group in general as it relates to myself. Teaching can be the same as learning itself when applied correctly and with an open mind. The role, to me, is extremely encompassing and covers everything from mentorship to therapist to life coach to friend and everything in between.
As a music teacher, I’ve had the fabulous fortune of developing lifelong relationships with students. Its a unique position that carries through time unlike a school teacher who spends a season or semester with a student. Many of my students spent 5-10 years with me and underwent the gambit of developmental changes from child to adult and I got to play a subtle role gently guiding them into artists…free thinkers…unleashing potential within that would translate into not just musical skills, but personal traits that become the essence of self.
Yes, I started in a tiny room in a local music store…but that room was filled with art and fish and calm lighting and inspirational sayings and interior design elements and warmth…however you pursue whatever you do becomes you, and all those around you.
I love to volunteer at schools and play in gymnasiums full of kids I would never meet again and talk to them directly about the simplicity of approaching the piano and making it sing. The same would go for photography. Without any formal training myself, I’ve always found it best to show the basic process of DOING as opposed to wishing or thinking, as whatever is actually done is actually done and once it is out there has the ability to grow and evolve in any way and attach to things previously unknown until it exists.