Events in Your Life

How do you know what events in your life are significant to shaping your future? I can't honestly say that I knew in advance of any one specific event that leads to the significant shaping of my future. Prior to high school, I had no idea which of the events I was involved in would be most important in shaping my life until after my future that period of time in that event had gone.

For years, I did not realize the degree of investment in some events I was involved in until later on in the future when I look back and pondered on that involvement, and came to the realization of the significant potential that event could have played or played in shaping my life today and in the future. For the majority of my life I was extremely active in sports. I played baseball, soccer, football, basketball and I swam competitively. I always assumed that I would end up doing something sports related, but a serious of events steered me in a different direction.

I was not one of those children to start playing percussion at a young age. I did not have private lessons and advanced music classes to shape and prepare me for what I am doing today. I enthusiastically joined my middle school band in the eighth grade. I loved the feeling of being apart of a group playing music and learning many new things. It was during this time that I began taking a few music lessons. It was very exciting and fun however, at that age I did not know that I would want take it a set further or else I would have worked a little bit harder. Maybe I would've even convinced my parents to get me into more constant private lessons.

I wish I would have taken the hints from my body, mind, and personality a lot sooner; the signs where there that my investment in music will be significant in shaping my future as a musician. I suppose I just never started following those signs until later in life. We had a piano in living room which was brought for my sister. She once took private lessons, and played at many performances. She was the one believed to become the musician in the family instead; she obtained a dance major degree.

At the age of 9 I recall myself sitting on the bench and pounding on the keys. Was my playing anything good? No, not at all, in fact it was nothing more than a child hitting random notes on a piano. Looking back, it wasn't just a child playing around on a piano. It was a child interest in music; he just didn't know it as yet.

When I was about twelve years old I found this small children's piano book with Christmas Melodies. Although I did not know the notes the book did have some fingering so I practice the fingering, and learned a few songs. I remember in year 2012 I was in the 6th grade. My math teacher, Mrs. Butler asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. At the age of 12 I didn't even know what I wanted to eat for breakfast, how could I have possibly known the answer to such an advanced question? I simply responded by saying I don't know. She said, "Oh because your hand writing is terrible, usually doctors or musicians have such bad penmanship." I am not saying that I have based my whole life off what my math teacher said about my hand writing but looking back, I could view that dialogue with my teacher as a significant discussion in molding my future as throughout the school year she continued to make reference to my hand with that of me being a musician. Plenty of people have bad hand writing, but someone who did not know anything about me knew that I would be a musician before I did.

The summer going into 9th grade I missed going to my cousin's wedding in London, England to attend marching band camp. This was the most contradicting time of my musical life. It was so hard, yet I loved it so much. We stood outside for hours under the scorching Atlanta sun marching and playing. Everyone was such good players and I was not