I don’t know if it’s just me, but when it comes to my French
horn playing, I literally cannot take compliments. Ever. From anyone. People
always come up to me after concerts and tell me how nice I sounded and what a
great job I did, and I’m just sitting there thinking “Are you kidding me? My
tone was awful, I botched about 7 notes in the first song, I have no dynamic
contrast,” etc, etc, etc. Of course, my mother raised me to always say Thank
You when people give me a compliment, so I do so begrudgingly, smile at them,
and at least try to look pleased about my performance.
I know absolutely nothing about athletics because I could
not play any sort of sport if my life depended on it, so compliments might be
really hard for them to take as well. I am fuh-reaking hard on myself when it
comes to playing my horn, and if my performance or practicing is not as good as
I think it could be, I beat myself up about it for at least 3 hours. Take this
morning for instance. Got to Edson about 7:40 and practiced until about 10
minutes ago, and it SUCKED. I’m talking Broncos in Super Bowl XLVIII (no idea
what number that is so sorry) sucked. I had terrible tone, I couldn’t play high
notes worth crap, nothing about that practice session was good. I get the exact
same way if a performance doesn’t go well. The funny thing is, even when I do
things well, I still don’t give myself nearly enough credit for it. Which leads
us into the whole point of this blog post: how am I supposed to take a
compliment from other people when I can’t even compliment myself when I play
something relatively decently? I think it’s time to take a step back and start
giving myself some credit when I don’t suck. Maybe I also need to learn not to
beat myself up so much when I don’t play as well as I think I can, but instead
think of some constructive criticism to write down in my practice journal so I
can refer to it the next time I sit down to practice. AND if I learn not to be
so hard on myself, maybe learning to take a compliment won’t be so bad. I mean,
I need to learn to take one now because otherwise life as a teacher with a band
program is going to be a little bit…TRICKY. Cue the Run-DMC music video. Talk
to you guys later.
