Practising when I don’t feel like it

I have a lot of concerts coming up.

I’m not complaining – just stating a fact. I have to have a lot of notes in my head and under my fingers. I start nearly every morning, sitting at the cello, playing before the sun comes up. And I have sometimes less than an hour to practise as efficiently as I can.

Sometimes I have longer, but most days I feel like I have to be so very clever with what I’m doing and waste no time at all. Not one drop of it.

And right now things are really busy. I’m struggling to get everything done. I have been let down by a few people, and it leaves a really nasty taste in my mouth. And the last thing I want to do is sit at the bloody cello. I want to sleep, or dig in the garden, or drink tea, or do some yoga or do a hundred OTHER things.

And yet I do it. I put bow to string and work.

When you next go up to a musician and say ‘It must be so lovely to do something that you love…’, or look at them in a concert, remember this post (if anyone reads these things!). Remember that just as you don’t want to do things, so do we.

And often, it’s practising.

I don’t love it all the time. A lot of the time, yes. But not every day.