Blowing in the Wind

How do you keep yourself grounded when you’re being torn apart from all directions by gusts of wind? When the wind starts to blow from one direction, forcing you to lean into it, work with it, and move on—just to suddenly change directions and push you from behind flat on your face. How do you build up the strength to fly when the air patterns are chaos, when the wind is howling and fierce, and you’re afraid to hit the ground?

I seem to have an attraction for windy places. My undergrad years were spent on the plains of Moorhead MN (read: Fargo, ND) where the extreme temperatures were matched only by the even more extreme wind. Grad school in Wyoming means that not much has changed, although it is a bit warmer here. I reach out to these places as places of personal growth and professional development. Why can’t I live somewhere temperate, normalized, and predictable?

I’ve always lived my life according to some sort of “plan,” tying my dreams and ambitions down to a metaphorical rock, holding on to them for dear life. It’s as if I was afraid that the wind from outside would tear apart my inner ambitions. As if letting myself go beyond the self-imposed confines of my mind would blow away all that I am, leaving a lifeless shell in the place of me. Whether I was tied down to a relationship, invested in my studies, or was simply narrow-minded in my scope and ambition, I’ve spent the vast majority of my life with blinders on. 

Tunnel vision.

But now, as a grad student studying music performance, I’m realizing that you can’t live life this way. One does not simply walk through life on the golden road of a perfect life plan and stick with it for the entirety of the journey. Rather, perhaps it is I who cannot simply do this. Every time I set a plan something happens that makes me want to change it. Life is open-ended for all of us; we walk through life creating our own narrative. That’s all that needs to be said about it. If you tell yourself that you are a good person, a dedicated student, a passionate lover, and a reliable friend, you will act the part and it will eventually be so. If you’ve ever read the books of Patrick Rothfuss then you know what I’m talking about, Kvothe went through life telling everyone around him he was a hero and acting the part. Eventually the act becomes the reality and what had earlier began as a rumor is now a truth.

It is all a matter of how we handle this open-endedness. Do we become an agoraphobic in terms of our lives? Do we fear the vast amount of possibilities that are constantly available; shunning them all in favor of the restricted life path we have set for ourselves?

I was a closet agoraphobic. I limited my perspective on life to only include music, opening it slightly to include philosophy and then slamming that door shut just as quickly. I decided upon grad school, moving away with my boyfriend and planning out the next five years of my life in advance. But then I arrived here, and somewhere along the line I let the wind into my heart and it has blown me away. 

I made the leap away from the comfortable and broke up with my boyfriend. Leaving solitude behind I started seeking adventures in new places alone and with new friends, I’ve met more awesome people and had more fun life experiences in the last few months then I had had in the past few years. And this is no ones fault but my own. I do not blame the men I loved for limiting my life perspective, I do not blame the professors that encouraged me one way or another, and I do not blame my family or friends, it was merely myself that decided to live that way, and I carry the blame. I was the one afraid to go somewhere new alone, I was the one that decided early on to throw myself head first into a career path with little to no hesitation and thought that it might now be right for me. I was the one who got myself to where I am today and I’m pretty damn glad that I was that person, because I am happy where I am. 

I know now that one cannot go through life in the negative, one cannot say "no" to everything. I'm old enough to know the consequences, whether financially, educationally, or whatever, but I'm also young enough not to say "no" anymore. If I have the opportunity to feed my soul with something new I will gladly do so, whether that means more time in new places playing pool with friends and soon-to-be-friends, or whether it means travelling half-way across the continent to immerse myself in music, I will do it gladly. 

The wind is unpredictable and that’s just something you have to deal with. Trusting that your wings are strong and your eyes are good, you just need to fly away. Sometimes you will crash and burn, but you will keep flying because flying is in your heart, it is a part of you. Every time you cross that hill, fly through that valley, and soar into the sky, your heart lifts and you are happy. Fearing the next crash, worrying about yesterdays weather, and avoiding flight for the safety of the ground is not the way to live, it is not who you are. You are strong, you are unique, and you will make it—no matter how the wind tries to stop you and hold you back. 

Adventure Time in Saratoga, WY

Pool has always been a pretty large part of my life: I grew up playing in bars while my mom worked and while my family just hung out downtown (small towns allow small children into their small bars). I distinctly remember playing pool with my first crush, barely able to see over the table, and the joy I had in winning the “game,” (Although let’s be honest, it was not a legitimate game of pool, throwing the balls around and hitting at them with bar sticks). In high school I participated in leagues, we lied about my age so that I could play in different bars around town on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday nights (15 to 18 isn’t that big of a difference, right?) and I played in countless different bar tournaments. I bought my first intermediate flute with money from pool tournaments and I played pool every night from as soon as the bus dropped me off at the bar until I went to bed. Pool permeated my life in a way that didn’t negatively affect my school, music, or sports. I somehow managed to do it all while playing ridiculous amounts of pool around town.

Unfortunately my undergraduate degree brought on insane amounts of practice with the flute: rehearsals, concerts, and classes. Studying both music and philosophy I rarely had the time to go to the gym and eat food, much less go to a bar to throw down some money and play some pool. So for years I took a pool hiatus 9 months out of the year.

It was awful.

But then I moved to Laramie to pursue a graduate degree in flute performance. It was here that I saw a sign for a pool tournament on campus, a tournament I enthusiastically signed up. Things weren’t going well between my then-boyfriend and me and I needed to do something that reminded me of who I was. This tournament was it. I later learned that it was a regional qualifier, the very same tournament that brought me to the ACUI regionals in Salt Lake City where I finished undefeated as the number one seed for nationals. Pool made a sudden, unexpected comeback into my life and I have shamelessly embraced it. Now I play in weekly tournaments here in Laramie, sometimes traveling down to Fort Collins for the tougher competition and the better tables. I have been watching professional matches on YouTube in between practicing the flute at school and at night while I wind down from the day with a glass of wine. So it’s not surprising that I have been jumping at the opportunity to travel to see the pro’s play and to test myself against better competition.

My first trip of this sort happened on March 23^rd when I drove down to the Denver pool hall Felt to see Nick Varner and Thorsten Hohmann play, with the intentions of playing in the 8-ball barbox tournament. Unfortunately due to the weather I showed up too late for the tournament to work out, but watching Nick and Thorsten play and hearing what they had to say about pool got me even more excited about the sport. There’s just something about watching a live match over a YouTube match that is just super exciting.

Which brings us to this last weekend. Oddly enough the University of Wyoming had Good Friday off for an Easter break, which turned out to be a convenient day off for me as a pool fan! I had known about the sixth annual Platte Valley Open pool tournament in Saratoga for a while, but I decided at the last minute that I wanted to shoot in the tournament. The final draw was hearing that Shane Van Boening was going to be there, because Shane is the pool player of my dreams right now. I have watched almost every one of his matches on YouTube and am always on the lookout for new matches of his online—whether nine ball, ten ball, barbox or large table, straight pool, anything. So hearing that he was going to be shooting pool at a place that was mere hours from my apartment was enough to get me to hop in my car and drive. I decided to try my hand at the Classic division and somehow managed to get in. With a $100 entrance fee, a $120 motel room fee, $30 for gas, and money for food and drinks, I was definitely stretching my financial situation for this tournament. And it was so worth it.

Although I lost my first match to Richard Case, a man that I would later become friends with, my first day in Saratoga was amazing. I was there with my buddies Scott Maloney and Delilah Ye Feng, and was in the midst of cheering on Scott when I heard that Shane Van Boening and Rodney Morris were in the finals of a mini-day tournament at the local bar, Duke’s. I shamelessly bailed on Scott to go watch the match. Shane and Rodney were playing a strange hybrid of 8-ball and 9-ball that EJ had devised solely for this tournament and that I had never seen before. So, unsurprisingly, I stood by a fellow pool player and struck about a conversation about the ball colors and the numbers. You see, for this Saratoga game (that’s what they dubbed this unique hybrid) the numbers 1-6, 7-12, and 13 were used, omitting the 14 and 15 balls—and the numbers did not match up to the typical ball numbers. 1 in normal pool is yellow, 1 in this game was green, and etc. So I asked the fellow next to me which was which and we started chatting (I think the ball colors matched up with snooker ball colors, but I’m still not sure).

After the match was over I kept chatting with the same pool player until an acquaintance of mine from Laramie wandered over and challenged me to a game. I didn’t want to be rude to my new friend, Jim Calderon, and just go play with this other guy, but he waved me ahead so I played a game. I won the match after playing much better then I had in my match earlier that night. Typical. I always shoot better in the hours after a tournament. It was then that Jim seemed to take an interest in my playing and he and I started shooting against each other.

Over the course of the next few days I learned more about my game from Jim then I have from any one other player. Because you see I never had a coach or anything like that. Nobody decided to teach me pool; I simply picked it up and worked it out. I’m always complimented on my stroke, which is long and even, and lately as I have been entering the pool world I’ve had a few people ask who taught me. But I can’t really say, so I say I taught myself. That’s why playing with Jim was a fresh new experience for me—he gave me good advice about my bridge hand, he questioned my shot choices, forced me to think about my leave, had me re-do shots that I missed until I got it, and just in general helped me out a lot with game. But not in an obnoxious way; instead we just played pool, sometimes I won, sometimes he won, and he corrected any problems that came up.

You might ask yourself why I, a young 22 year old girl, would drive to the middle of nowhere to watch pool, play pool, watch more pool, and then play pool until 3 a.m. and then 6 a.m. the next day. And honestly, all I can say is that you aren’t a pool player if you have to ask that question.

Despite only winning one match in my division, and honestly shooting pretty awful pool on my part, I am so glad that I went out to Saratoga. On Saturday I started playing pool at 10:30, took a brief break around noon to get a new tip on my cue, started up again at 1, and played until 4 when I then went and watched matches until midnight. After midnight I went straight back to the bar and proceeded to play with Jim until 6 in the morning. The only thing sending me to bed was the knowledge that I had to wake up at 10 a.m. to check out of my sketchy motel; otherwise I would have kept playing all night long. I watched Shane Van Boening and Rodney Morris battle once each day of my elongated weekend, I watched Raj Hundal, Stevie Moore and countless others play. I played for so many hours that I honestly couldn’t even tally them up. And I got to meet tons of people who were passionate about pool as well.

Many of these people were people like Jim, players in the Master’s division who seemed surprised at my passion for pool and my insatiable appetite for the sport. I learned their names (promptly forgetting most of them, unfortunately, I have a terrible memory for names), watched them shoot, and talked to them afterwards. I watched matches with them and talked about how when I watch a pro match I like to hypothetically run the table in my mind—picking a pattern of balls (1-3-5-4-2-6-7-8 for example) imagining what my cue control would be—and then I would compare that to what the player did. One player in particular would ask me at each table what I would do, or in the middle of a table how I would fix a problem ball or etc., and I was always proud when Shane or Rodney would do exactly what I said I would do. Hypothetically of course, I can see the shots, but I am working on the cue control to make them happen. But honestly, just being able to predicate the shots of a champion like Shane Van Boening really makes me feel good about my future in the sport.

I am excited to play in future tournaments, I am excited about the prospect of practicing and bettering my game, and I am excited about where I could be in the next few years. The power of youth is infectious and this is the first time I have noticed it: at 22 years old, I can do anything I want with my life, I have a long time to live it, and the open ended nature of it that I have bemoaned in the past finally feels liberating and exciting. I can honestly say that I hope to make something of my pool playing while also working on my music. Maybe someday I can gig at pool halls with a jazz combo and play in tournaments on the side.

That would be a good life. 

Performance

Over this last weekend I had an audition with the Fort Collins Symphony for their newly open principal flute position. I was looking forward to the opportunity to practice the audition process for orchestral gigs, because despite wanting and trying my best to win the audition I knew that I was guaranteed an enlightening experience, even if I didn’t win the job.

Performance for me has been a strange journey these last few years. When I was younger I was excited and willing to play for everyone, a precocious child with no uncertainty or shame, and with a passion for simply playing. I would play my flute for everyone, whether they wanted to hear it or not. But around high school and into my college years that gradually began to change. I still loved to play but something in my mind shifted from a concept of playing to one of practicing—rather then the freedom of play, I was confined to the strict standards of practice/homework. Although I understood that one needs to focus on the negative aspects of ones playing in order to progress, I missed the joy of simply playing my flute and learning new pieces. Something snapped within me in my sophomore year of college in a small performance for the woodwind studio—nerves I hadn’t felt before the performance sprung up in the midst of it and I lost control. My flute started shaking, my lips were quivering, and my breath control was nonexistent. This was the worst experience one can imagine, for not only did I sound bad and embarrass myself in front of my colleagues, but I completely lost all control over my body. That was the bad part. When you’re young you don’t think about being old, I never think about the possible day when I tell my body to do something and it can’t or won’t. But at that moment I was telling my body to stop shaking, to calm down, to keep going, and it refused. This was the moment of truth, and I have been shaking myself of its aftereffects since.

But on Saturday I made the trek to Fort Collins with a few friends of mine for an orchestral audition. My first “big-kid” audition, and I was surprisingly at ease. In the last six months my life has been going through a wide variety of changes: physically, mentally, emotionally, as well as interpersonally. All of these changes became very clear to me as I woke up Saturday morning and went through my morning stretching routine. I was cool, calm, and collected as I showered, dressed, ate, and hopped in the car. The weather was a definite help as well, the first beautiful sunny day in a long time enabled me to wear my skirt and top without a jacket. I realized that the baggage I had been carrying for the last few years may just be gone. However, I had been optimistic before and didn’t want to have these hopes dashed against a wall when I reached the audition, so I (un)wisely ignored these feelings and took off down the road.

Here’s an interesting revelation about myself: I get edgy, unhappy, and stressed out when I’m in one place for too long. Why is this factoid relevant? Well this trip was the first time since December that I left Laramie. It was the first time I got into my car and drove down the road for location X, and it felt good. Damn good. Perhaps this is why I put 80,000 miles on my car in three years—driving just feels right sometimes.

The most beautiful part of my Saturday was the audition itself. Despite the fact that the warm-up rooms were hot and so live that a note resonated in the air for five minutes after being played (note the hyperbole) whereas the audition room itself was completely dead (even the ceiling had carpet!), and despite the omnipresence of earlier winners from earlier rounds, obnoxious practicers, and blatant show-offs trying to get in your head, I played well in my audition. Not well enough to land the gig, but I’m not quite at the place just yet. However, I played in that audition just as well as I ever have in a practice room. Sure a few notes cracked from dry lips and the keys on my flute clicked and clacked like it was possessed, but my musicality, my tone, and my technique were my own. I was not overwhelmed by anxiety, fear, and uncertainty. I nailed it. This might not make sense to those of you who think that winning the job would have been “nailing” it, but sometimes it’s the experience that matters, not the performance. 

My Favorite Topic: Food

One of the great things about going to the University of Wyoming is the surprising diversity in the music department here (at least concerning the graduate students). Many of my colleagues are from different areas of China and South Korea, and it’s been a lot of fun talking to them about the many differences between their home countries and America. One of the big differences that I like to talk about is in the style of teaching, both in the university setting and in the private lesson setting. Since I’ve spent the last five years of my life at college I have a pretty firm understanding of how American institutions tend to work and it’s just really neat to think about how it works in different countries.

But more importantly there are huge differences in food and diet. For some reason since I’ve moved to Laramie I have become a food monster, I’m always hungry and I’m always eating! The logical part of me says its because I’ve been lifting a lot more and working out a lot more than previously, but it still seems a bit odd to me. Anyways, the fact that I focus on the food differences between my friends and I won’t come as a surprise to any of them.

So what of these differences? Well, a couple of weeks ago a group of us got together and we had our friend Stephanie make some authentic Mexican food. That wasn’t exactly the plan; we were breaking in my new ice cream attachment for my beautiful new stand mixer (thanks mom!) when Stephanie decided she wanted to contribute to the food as well! It was great: the food was delicious, we had a blast helping Steph prepare everything, and we just had a lot of great conversation. So naturally I decided that this was something that needs to happen more! Even for my American friends (which actually aren’t very many here as Ashley and I are the only two American graduate students in our year) we all come from different environments. We all grew up eating different things; we have different tastes and skills. So why not share it? Which is super exciting, because that means we all get to get together and eat! What an excellent idea!

So for tonight we will be going to Mei’s place and indulging in some homemade Korean cuisine. I have no idea what’s on the menu but I am really excited. Especially since my boyfriend and I recently broke up, I’m looking forward to going on and seeing people—maybe we’ll go out for a few beers afterwards! (: The interesting thing about Mei is that she is Korean but grew up in China. She retained her Korean culture but also absorbed some of the Chinese, so this is going to be an even more unique insight into her life.

I’m not trying to say that food can reveal everything about a person, but it does say a lot. The cliché is that you are what you eat, and I think it has a point. How you approach eating says a lot about how you take care of yourself. If you don’t care about yourself and your body, what says you will care about me and mine? Obviously this is a generalization—enjoying fast food on occasion is by no means a deal breaker, but if McDonalds is your idea of a daily lunch, then we might have a problem.

The cultural differences in food can be a great eye-opener for many other differences. When eating with my Korean friends we don’t all have our own plates, instead we order a variety of plates and share everything on the table. Korea is a very collectivist place, fitting in and working together is far more important than being an individual and this is revealed through how they eat. When eating with my friends I learn many things about them because it gives me space to relax and just ask. Perhaps the straightforward act of sharing a meal makes you feel closer to someone, or maybe that’s just me. Regardless it’s something I love to do.

So tonight we will continue the new tradition of enjoying each other’s cuisine, company, and stories. I look forward to it and I’m glad that food is something that can bring us all together.

U Dub

I spent this last weekend in Salt Lake City with eight people who I had only met once before. Even though I didn't know them really well, I definitely had fun getting to know them a little better. We were all attending the regional tournament for 9-ball and table tennis, two guys and two gals representing UW in both tournaments. And I had a lot of fun, more fun then I have had in a long time. Perhaps I had so much fun just because I didn't have to do anything other then play pool and hang out (that would make sense anyways). Despite not being proficient in 9-ball (I’ve always played straight eight or ball-in-hand eight ball) I managed to take first place. I shot some good pool, and some bad. There was one match in particular where everything went right: I beat the girl 4-1. Unfortunately the championship match was probably the worse I had played all weekend. The other girl was struggling pretty badly too, it was kind of pathetic. But nonetheless I was victorious! Which means? Sometime this summer I’m going to nationals for 9-ball. Aww yeah!

Boom! Who knew?

I’ll put up a better, more thoughtful blog later. For now I have a lot of catching up to do and many deep thoughts to swirl around in my head. Things are gonna be working better for me soon, I just need to figure out how to make it happen.

Salsa

Today I made salsa. Not just any salsa, but the homemade salsa recipe that my mom has perfected over the years. However, I did add a few unique touches: i.e. jalapenos and spicy taco sauce! It was and/is some of the best salsa I have had in a long time and greatly surpasses Applebees’ recipe. (Which means that I get to save some money this week by not going to get half off apps after nine.). Salsa is surprisingly healthy- my recipe is straight up just tomatoes, peppers, onion, and cilantro. Veggies and more veggies. Unfortunately I don’t have a food processor so it’s usually quite chunky, until today when I realized I could throw it all in my blender. Which was quite successful, might I add.

This is a good reminder to me about what I eat and why I eat. Obviously one eats to give the body sustenance and to enjoy the flavor. But I’ve recently been thinking more about how what I eat makes me feel. Ever since I was a small child I have been plagued with migraines, and from a very young age I was told to be very careful and aware of what I was eating. Because for me my migraines are triggered by food—too much dairy, too much candy, too much protein, too much happiness. It seemed to me that everything I ate was a “trigger” and that there was no way I could give it all up, so instead I simply continued to eat what I wanted to eat, when I wanted to eat it. Flash forward a few years and you will see that my migraines never got any better, although I got a bit better at functioning when they struck (minus the vomiting part, you can never really get good at that).

Recently though I have realized something. Something I probably should have realized a long time ago, but alas…I’m a slow learner. When I eat a healthy amount of food and am very careful about what I put inside of my body, I can splurge on candy and treats—all the things I’ve always eaten, but now can eat without succumbing to the migraines of doom. If I haven’t eaten breakfast and I have a pop tart for lunch (something that happens at school sometimes), I can expect a full blown migraine by the end of the day. Even if I eat some healthy food after the treat, my body will just shut down on me.

So lets flash-forward to today. I have been lifting weights and working out three days a week and I have been focusing on what I eat. Not because of some new years resolution, not because I hate my body, and not because I am trying to look like what society expects a woman to look like. Instead I have been eating healthy because, shocker, doing so makes my body feel better. I have been lifting weights because I want to be strong, confident, and I want to feel good about my body. Sure my body has been changing, and I’m not going to lie, I think it has been changing for the better, but that doesn’t mean I will reach some sort of goal down the road and quit lifting. I lift three times a week because that gives me three times to add more weight to the bar, to pull myself up higher, and to squat a little bit lower. My self-esteem has shot through the roof and I’m noticing changes in my body that I never would have noticed had I resigned myself to mindless cardio for the rest of my life. (Not that cardio is a bad form of exercise, in fact I can’t wait to start running outside again, but rather cardio was never effective for me to make me feel good about my body and myself).

If only I had realized sooner that in order to feel better about myself I simply needed to alter the way I treated myself. It seems like such an obvious solution but it has evaded me from twenty-two years. Luckily I have a full life ahead of me, one that I will fully enjoy after finally realizing how to reach my full potential.

 

times they are a changin

I’m not usually a fan of declaring New Year’s resolutions. I feel like people more often then not announce their list of life changing resolutions on the first of January (many of them referencing alcohol and the moderation they hope to embody) only to just shift back to their original habits by the first of February. That being said, I do think that every once in a while we should reflect on our lives and look at what there is in it that makes us happy, what makes us sad, where our stress comes from, and our happiness? If there are changes to be made, then incorporate them slowly—change one element of your life, once that has become habit, alter another element, and so on.

My resolution is not one of physique or consumption—I have already changed these elements of my life, and although they are not perfect they are not the new change for the New Year. Instead I am focusing on my mentality, the way I handle different situations, and the ways in which I deal with change.

Change is a funny thing. It can be gradual—where, in the middle of it, you don’t even realize it’s happening until you reflect back on where you were before. Or it can be drastic and life changing, where you would have to be blind or dumb not to realize that something just happened. This sort of change is the one that most people focus on, fear, and avoid at all costs. The end of a relationship, a move to a new city, state, or country, the loss of a loved one, or starting all over with a new job, these are all things that cause pain, uncertainty, and trepidation.

But sometimes it’s the gradual changes that we should be more aware of. The gradual diminishing of conversation and interaction between friends, the drifting apart of loved ones, but also the systematic building of strength as you work out, the piecemeal revelations of your self.

Over Christmas these two types of change were combined into one epic, awful relationship explosion. Simultaneously everything changed and yet there has been a gradual effort of rebuilding what once was. And it’s making me appreciate the little things that had previously gone unnoticed. The way one doesn’t notice as one builds trust and comfort in a relationship. The way in which, if not careful, two people can gradually take each other for granted. The fact that, even if we think we do, in our twenties most of us don’t really know what we want and need in our lives. And that we sometimes overcomplicate it through our ceaseless need to share our lives with another. Even more so that it is completely worth it to do so, it is worth the possibility of a break up that a relationship brings. 

But sometimes the end is at the back of your mind, and you don’t know how to make it go away. You don’t know how to handle the change that a break up brings, the open ended possibilities, the self-reliance and lack of commitment to another when making choices. When the future has always included another in your mind, what do you do when that other is no longer? Whether it be a significant other, a family member, or a good friend, this absence can be extremely profound.

Even if that absence is temporary—perhaps you are travelling alone, rather than with a friend, now you can do whatever it is that You want without having to compromise with another. Does this excite you? Or does it make you nervous; do you not know what to do?

One thing about this upcoming year is for certain: I will be travelling to Europe for the first time, and I will be alone for the first three weeks of my trip. I hope to have friends join me after those three weeks, but that isn’t even for sure. What will I do when I land in the airport, don’t speak the language and have no idea where I am? I can speculate about what I will do, but the only thing for sure is that when I get there, something will be done. I need to take comfort in the fact that I am strong and independent, and that when I make it to Rome I will be able to stand on my own two feet. There is a lot of time between now and then, so who knows what will happen, and I think that the best thing to do is to just trust myself.

My New Year’s resolution, then, can be seen to be to trust myself. To do what I do and know that it’s what I do, so have fun while doing it. This resolution isn’t a fad, it’s not me committing to some stupid diet or crazy exercise program, it’s a fundamental mental revaluation of my self, and I will commit to it.