Or at least I can pretend to

Violin: I think that the five hours a day thing works a little differently than I suggested. It seems like about every five hours, you noticeably improve, but that doesn't mean that you don't improve if the five hour block is stretched over two or three days. So as I've been practicing consistently less than five hours a day recently, I've been getting better, but at a much slower rate than I could be. Upon writing that, I had that recurring "duh" response. Oh well. The last few days have really convinced me that figuring out a smooth and relaxed mechanism in my right hand is totally key. I have gotten really sensitive to the times when my hand goes into a messed up state (which is nearly all the time) and am getting a lot better at quickly locating the source of the problem. One big problem I had before was that whenever I would collapse my fingers, my hand would suddenly feel very uncomfortable, and so I would soon still my knuckles back up. I guess my old teacher never figured out why I did this, but I think the reason has to do with my thumb and inner hand. I always thought that the tension I felt from flattening my knuckles came from my the top of my hand, but I was wrong. It comes from the bottom, right around where the thumb meets the hand. My preliminary solution to this was bending the thumb a lot, but that proved to be ultimately a dead end. Eventually I was able to find an orientation for my thumb and fingers that allowed the hand to collapse comfortably. It felt great! When I curved my first finger a little, I was able to pull with my arm and feel like I was connecting directly to the bow and thus to the string. I also consistently noted that when I was able to really remove all thumb tension, my sound improved dramatically. It was really amazing actually. So I think with these new insights I can keep working on being more consistent.

Life: Went to see the new Bond movie. It was totally awesome. I have to agree with everybody when they say it is one of the best. There could have been more cool gadgets, but it's probably good they played those down, since it sometimes takes away a certain amount of seriousness from the atmosphere. Also I had this terrible desire today to have a girlfriend or something. I wish I didn't have impulses like that because eventually they build up and I end up doing something I regret. I wish I could be completely happy just by myself, but I guess that's not the way it is supposed to be. I just hope I can hold off until I can get involved with someone who is actually attractive.

Practice Time: 2 hours