its time to wake up
I realize that the art of blogging is not born with people. you need to nurture that "thing". Nobody was born blogging and I think that many of the people who are very serious, committed bloggers(Ras Mengesha) all begun as slow bloggers till they got hooked-this sounds like as though am trying to give a disclaimer to excuse my absence. Yes I am. ha ha!
For the past weeks, I have gotten to laugh a lot because I have the funniest friends. It is like as though they were told by God to come and make me laugh all the time. The work is a lot I must say but it is all the same quite exciting! Look! am jumping stories!...I was talking about the past weeks. Other than laughing, the weather has also been quite terrible if I must say. Where I come from, there is no snow( except for the peaks of the mountains, and 2 incidents where it actually snowed in a small town and people payed to go and see it. ) The equator passes right through the country and this makes the days and nights equal. The weather is cool and wet,or hot and dry, or warm and wet. It is not cold and snowing!!!Therefore I have wished that I could be home these past weeks, just because of the weather. However,seeing that I am a million miles away from home, I have had no choice but to deal with it. And how did I deal? Laughter!!!!
Many times whenever we go to a new place we either take it by storm, take time to adapt to it, or just let the place pass us by, just like that. I realized that when I came here, my plan was to 'take time and figure the place out.' This also meant that I was supposed to be silent in class and 'just chill' while everyone did their 'thing.'
On Monday, I went to a private instruction class* and I was supposed to present a song to my teacher. I sang it and when I was done, the teacher and I begun to critique it. I thought I sang quite well but the teacher thought the opposite. She told me that I did not put my heart into it.
'Excuse me? I gave it all my heart!!!' (of course I did not say this out loud because in my culture you can never say such a thing to someone who is your teacher, instructor or elder)
I smiled. She gave me some other comments and told me to repeat the song and this time she was expecting me to really sing it.
'Are you serious?! You want me to sing this song again?!' (Again, all this was going on in my head)
I smiled, cued in the track and sang. This time it was different. I sang it straight from my heart. I even cried in the process!!I was very proud of myself.
'Good, that is more like it. Now, go practice some more because I know you can sing more that what you are giving me. Stop holding back' She said
'What do you mean I am holding back?!!! Can't you see am crying!!!' (all in my head)
I smiled, then nodded.
That evening I went for a concert at school. I was so impressed and that is when I got this epiphany:
* this is a class where a student has a on-on-one lesson with the teacher.
For the past weeks, I have gotten to laugh a lot because I have the funniest friends. It is like as though they were told by God to come and make me laugh all the time. The work is a lot I must say but it is all the same quite exciting! Look! am jumping stories!...I was talking about the past weeks. Other than laughing, the weather has also been quite terrible if I must say. Where I come from, there is no snow( except for the peaks of the mountains, and 2 incidents where it actually snowed in a small town and people payed to go and see it. ) The equator passes right through the country and this makes the days and nights equal. The weather is cool and wet,or hot and dry, or warm and wet. It is not cold and snowing!!!Therefore I have wished that I could be home these past weeks, just because of the weather. However,seeing that I am a million miles away from home, I have had no choice but to deal with it. And how did I deal? Laughter!!!!
Many times whenever we go to a new place we either take it by storm, take time to adapt to it, or just let the place pass us by, just like that. I realized that when I came here, my plan was to 'take time and figure the place out.' This also meant that I was supposed to be silent in class and 'just chill' while everyone did their 'thing.'
On Monday, I went to a private instruction class* and I was supposed to present a song to my teacher. I sang it and when I was done, the teacher and I begun to critique it. I thought I sang quite well but the teacher thought the opposite. She told me that I did not put my heart into it.
'Excuse me? I gave it all my heart!!!' (of course I did not say this out loud because in my culture you can never say such a thing to someone who is your teacher, instructor or elder)
I smiled. She gave me some other comments and told me to repeat the song and this time she was expecting me to really sing it.
'Are you serious?! You want me to sing this song again?!' (Again, all this was going on in my head)
I smiled, cued in the track and sang. This time it was different. I sang it straight from my heart. I even cried in the process!!I was very proud of myself.
'Good, that is more like it. Now, go practice some more because I know you can sing more that what you are giving me. Stop holding back' She said
'What do you mean I am holding back?!!! Can't you see am crying!!!' (all in my head)
I smiled, then nodded.
That evening I went for a concert at school. I was so impressed and that is when I got this epiphany:
- Many times we take a back sit when it comes to things that we can take the lead in and we let great opportunities pass us by.
- We think that the work to be done is for 'those guys' that are good at it and we do not see ourselves as people who can be good at something.
- We refuse to believe that we can actually make a difference with whatever little thing that we have, so we 'take it easy' and refuse to apply ourselves, so that people do not tell us that we are doing to much or trying to prove something.
- It is time to get rid of the idea that I will wait for later to be great and start being great from the get go. Great at listening to the teacher, great at rehearsing, great at doing my assignments on time, great at listening to people, great at encouraging people and great at working with other people as a team.
As I wrote all these down in my journal that night, I could feel an exciting tingle in my chest. I wanted to stay up and keep writing but I had an early morning class the next day so I had to sleep. However, since that day, I decided that I will wake up and stop making excuses for everything...including making the excuse for blogging. I even made a reading and rehearsal timetable.
yup! ama kweli!
* this is a class where a student has a on-on-one lesson with the teacher.
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