Some day I'll have the answer

Violin: While continuing to refine my right hand, and work on consistency, I made a few good insights. The most important one seems to be an improvement on the thumb. I was confused about the whole aspect of bending my thumb; when I would try to bend it, like my teacher used to say I had to, it wouldn't feel comfortable, but if I didn't bend it, the situation wasn't any better. Today I found that I had to bend it ever so slightly to achieve a position of comfort. When I found the right amount, it felt natural, and I could feel a connection between my thumb and first finger. This discovery made me remember something my old teacher said once, which was that his thumb barely bent at all, just enough to allow the knuckles to relax, and I think that's what I'm getting at now. I have to keep remembering to pull with my arm, and more work needs to focus on the up bows. They are still very untamed, and will instinctively do all sorts of strange and unfortunate things. Mostly, I raise my arm up too much and pull my hand away from the bow in a way that makes it very hard to recover when switching direction to down. I noticed that it is important to release the small amount of bend that I had on the down bow when coming up, and to keep the knuckles down. I've also noticed myself sometimes starting to grip with the ring and pinky fingers, but this problem is quickly resolved when noticed. I think it comes from still feeling like I need to hold on tight for dear life when things get hairy...when in fact I need to relax even more.

Life: I think I spent too much time in front of a computer screen today, because I had a headache by the end of it. I watched an episode from the original series of Star Trek for the first time today, it was quite entertaining. I was inspired to download it after reading that a South Park episode I watched recently had drawn extensively from this particular Star Trek episode. Luckily that was about the most exciting thing that happened to me today. I don't know what I would do if I actually had to interact with someone or something...

Practice Time: 3 hours