A year ago, I found a really good LivingSocial deal for Piano lessons. The deal was buy 1 month of lessons and get the second month free. I was considering taking up the piano when I was retired. However, this deal was good. I figured I could buy the LivingSocial package and buy a small/cheap keyboard and if I stunk I could just walk away and donate the keyboard.
Shortly after I started playing, I really started to enjoy it. It reminds me of another hobby of mine, jumping robe for exercise. I used to find videos on YouTube of people doing various moves with a jump rope and I would try to duplicate what I saw. The piano gave me this feeling and it was also a mental challenge to learn how to read music and stay with the beat.
I was also in a group setting, which was really nice. It’s been me and 2 other students and our teacher. In the group lessons we would play ensemble pieces. Along with being able to meet some really great people, we had small recitals for our friends and family. The recitals have been fun to share with people what we’ve been working on.
Overall, I’m really happy I’ve started to learn to play the piano. I’m glad that I didn’t wait till retirement. I feel like I would’ve missed out on some good years of entertainment and growth. There have been 3 really nice things that have come from this process:
- I’m spending anywhere from 20 minutes to an hour practicing. To budget this time into my schedule, I’ve made drastic cutbacks to how much time I spend watching tv shows and movies.
- I’ve gotten better at performing/showing someone something I’ve worked on. I used to struggle with this in the past, but I feel a lot better about showing someone my work.
- I got more comfortable about asking questions. I used to worry that people might think I was dumb when I asked for help. But I’ve noticed, I don’t worry about what other people might think.
I would encourage out there that wanted to learn how to play a musical instrument to take it up.