Am I or Am I Not Passionate About Playing the Violin?

[N92]

This will be a long message, but I would appreciate it if anyone read everything I've written and gave me some advice and/or suggestions.

Here is some necessary background information about me.

I am a 14-year-old high school student who discovered Actualized.org a little over a year ago, during spring of last year; before then I had done no personal development. As of a month ago, I have completely eliminated internet, TV, video games, and all other toxic/unnecessary information sources from my life. Also as of a month ago, I have installed a daily exercise habit, with a 100% commitment, of walking for 30 minutes every day, and I hope to increase that daily exercise to 45 minutes or an hour each day for greater results, when I am confident my body has fully adjusted to the half-hour every day. Finally, I have made a strong effort in the last month to improve my abilities at studying, enjoy studying more, and learn better from the subjects I must study in school. Although I was previously a good student, I was not an excellent student, and I had very much fallen into the trap of only studying due to extrinsic motivation, not intrinsic motivation or because I had a true fascination with the subjects I studied and with life in general. Even though school has now ended, I will continue to study during the summer using what time I have, both in school-related and non-school related subjects in order to further practice studying, so I will be able to start strongly at the beginning of the next academic year. Within the next couple of months, I hope to start making small, incremental changes to my diet to improve my health, in addition to exercising every day. I have not learned much about life purpose yet, which presents a problem for me, as you’ll see below.

My current problem is this. Since I was a little boy, I have played the violin, and due to years of practice I have reached quite a high level with my playing. In fact, I am at a high enough level now that I could be viable as a world-class professional violinist in the future if I continue down my present path of practicing and improving. However, I am now at a crossroads with my violin studies. I have been pondering my current situation, and I think I have realized that I don’t really have a true, deep passion for playing the violin. In truth, I began to suspect this many months ago, but now this doubt has fully materialized and taken hold, and it has come to a head. Since a few years ago, when I started to become very good at playing my instrument, I took for granted that playing the violin would be my career, and I never questioned that. But now, I have the intuition that if I continued down my present path, improved at a steady pace throughout the rest of my teenage years, and became a professional violinist at a very high level, I would not enjoy my career, or my life. To live the life of a musician, in all of its drudgery, tediousness, and repetitiveness, to spend hours every day locked in a practice room, to perform the same music over and over again, and to do this for years and possibly decades on end, would probably drain my soul completely inside. I did not have this feeling until probably just a few months ago, but now I do. 

So, the situation at hand is that I can choose to quit playing; refrain from taking action for now; or choose an alternative between those two, perhaps to continue playing but to spend less time practicing every day. Currently, my external circumstances are such that I could take action on this matter and remove the violin from my life right now if I so choose. Alternatively, I could wait to make this "course correction," and it probably would be wise to take a little more time to think about this. I have about two months to finalize my decision. But if I don't make a decision after two months, I will be locked into playing the violin for another whole year, due to a year-long string-playing academy that I will not be able to get out of after I start it. I could spend that one year slowly pondering what my decision will be with regard to the violin and learning more about self-actualization and life purpose to help me make a decision. But, the danger in waiting an entire year to make my move is that I will have wasted a full year doing something that I probably am not truly passionate about, time that I could have spent more effectively on finding my real passion and doing more productive activities. Also, there is another reason it might be best to take action right now: if it would be a wise move to make a decision now, I’d prefer to do so, because to remove the violin or cut down the amount of time I spend on it would free up my time for studying, exercising, meditating, and investigating what I am truly passionate about, if it is not the violin. It will ensure that I have all the time I need to be able to fulfill all of my absolute commitments on a daily basis. (For now, that category of absolute commitments includes only exercise every day, but in a few months I will also build in daily meditation.) By definition, if I make a 100% commitment to do something, I cannot miss a single day, and the more items there are in my schedule, the more likely it is that I will miss a day. The sooner I can remove that obstacle, the better, so I won’t get set back because I’m unable to fulfill all of my “100% commitments” on a daily basis. If I spend less time or none at all on the violin, I will have more time in the day to do everything I need to, because I will have cleaned my schedule up. In addition, removing the violin, if there really is not much use in pursuing it for me, would make me less stressed throughout the day because I have less activities to juggle.

However, even if I have two months to make this decision, there is another factor to consider here that forces me to make relative haste. In the scenario that I choose to stay with the violin without quitting or slowing down, I will have to decide to do that quickly, because if I don’t devote a lot of time and hard work into practicing at this point in my musical development, I will have much less of a chance of being viable as a professional in the future. The age I am at is crucial to improvement at the instrument. If I either stop playing or slow down, or if I take too long to decide to pursue the violin with full force, I will not make enough progress during this time, and it will likely be too late for me to make enough progress afterward to pursue a career at a very high level.

But before I can think about what course of action is best to take, I need to gain some understanding of my relationship with the violin and truthfully whether I am passionate about it or not, and what I want to do with my violin studies, since these matters are at the center of this decision I must make. These factors are by themselves already very difficult to make sense of. I am aware of my own extreme intelligence and maturity relative to my age, but nevertheless, as a young person who has only just finished his first year of high school, I lack the practical, firsthand experience to make this decision as well as I would like to. In addition to lacking direct experience, I haven’t even really studied life purpose, or how to know whether or not I am passionate about a field or discipline. Even though I have studied basic theory on personal development, I barely understand myself at all. Right now, I don’t even trust my own mind, because I have an idea of how deceptive the mind can be, and my mind is pulling me in more than one direction right now. I am very confused; I understand the need to acknowledge and admit that confusion, and I have done so. Likewise, I understand that I need to accept and become all right with the confusion, and I have done that also. But admitting and accepting that I don’t know how to handle the situation does not eliminate the need to make a relatively swift choice, in a few short days, if I don’t want to run the risk of wasting one more entire year of the prime years of my life. 

Yet I also want to avoid making an overly rash decision. A potential trap that comes with making a decision quickly seems to be that I could do something that will do more harm than good in the long term, because I made the decision too quickly. So that is one issue I must deal with: not wasting any time with this decision while also not making it too hastily.

As I’ve said, my mind is pulling me in more than one direction in terms of what I should do. On one hand, my intuition says that it would be best to quit the violin as soon as possible because practicing it will not yield much long-term benefit for me, and because I could do activities that are more beneficial in the long term with my time and eventually find something that I am more passionate about. But at the same time, I feel the decision may not be that simple, and that there are many more factors I need to consider and keep track of, as well as multiple doubts and ideas, many of them conflicting, swirling around in my mind, blurring everything. I don’t know which of my thoughts and conclusions about the situation to trust, and I fear deceiving myself. For example, I have doubts about whether I truly don’t have passion for the violin, or if I could potentially still do well in a career as a violinist. I sometimes have the objection in my mind that I might still have some passion about the violin. I also worry that quitting would be a terrible mistake, for a variety of reasons. Part of my mind says I should quit, and another says I shouldn’t, and I don’t know how to make sense of it all.

There are many more thoughts in my head. One is that even if violin-playing is not my passion, I feel like I have a deep attachment to playing the violin and to the music I play. I have inadvertently formed this attachment due to a number of reasons. At this point, music seems to somehow underlie my entire worldview, and it seems a part of the foundation of my mind. Music has shaped my mind, and it influences my perception. When I hear music, I feel like there is a part of me that lights up, like a metal detector beeps when it detects metal, because music is such a deep part of me. I also enjoy listening to music generally, sometimes to a great degree, and there is certain music that I do find beautiful in very deep ways that I cannot describe. Music has ways of influencing my emotions that I have not seen anything else imitate. Another specific way I am deeply attached to music is that listening in the present to music I have heard and played in the past, in a strange way that is hard to express and that I do not even understand, evokes a feeling of deep, clear recollection of the past and of a specific emotion or feeling that is tied to a memory of a certain period of time, and occasionally a nostalgia and yearning for the past. A particular song or piece that I hear in the present may conjure up a very specific feeling that is tied specifically to a particular period of time in my past. For these reasons and possibly others, quitting the violin if I so choose will probably be much more emotionally difficult than I initially thought it would be. Before, I figured that because I wasn’t really passionate about the violin, quitting would be easy, and that when the time was right, I would just drop it like a reptile would shed its skin. In reality, though, I see now it won’t be that easy. So, when I think about partially abandoning this part of myself, leaving behind music and the violin, I feel fear and negative emotions of all kinds.

As an important tangent, what I described above might indicate that I do have a deep passion for music overall, or perhaps types of music that are different from the classical pieces I play on the violin, because classical music is not my favorite kind of music. That will take further discovery to find out, and if you have anything to say about whether I do have passion for music in some way besides playing the violin, I would appreciate some advice on that. 

But, the bigger reason I bring this up is that if I do have passion for music in some capacity other than playing the violin, there may be benefits in continuing to study the violin. The overall field of music exists such that there are general musical benefits in continuing to study the violin that may be applied to other disciplines within music, and possibly to a career that focuses broadly on the entire field of music rather than some narrow part of it. The question is whether the benefits of maintaining the violin a little bit are worth the cost in terms of time per week. I don’t think anyone who will read this is an expert in music, so I don’t expect anyone to give me very specific music-related advice, although I certainly would like it if someone did give me specific music-related advice. But I wonder if you’re able to give some input about whether you think continuing to study the violin (in a reduced capacity, perhaps with only a small amount of time spent on it a week as opposed to the 10 to 20 hours I might spend per week now) would be worth my time, considering that I may yet have enough passion for music to make a career out of it in some way. Or would it be a better idea to just drop the violin completely for now if it is not worth my time, and determine what to do later if I do decide I am passionate about music? I am not certain about this, which is why I’m asking this question, but I feel that perhaps it is a better idea to quit the violin for now. I can figure out how to set myself up and possibly re-learn the violin in the future if I do decide to pursue music as a career somehow. But as of now, I feel spending even only a handful of hours on maintaining the violin every week is not worth my time, especially considering I’m not even certain I will pursue music as a career.

Another doubt in my mind, related to the above, is this: “If I do have passion for music overall, or some part/discipline of music, maybe I shouldn’t quit the violin or even reduce the amount of time I spend on it, even if classical violin-playing is itself not my passion.” 

Something else is that when I play my instrument well, when I practice and feel myself making tangible progress, and when I have had performances go well in the past, I enjoy myself. This occurrence in itself seems logical enough, but this confuses me because I don’t know if this means I still have some passion for the violin. After all, it sort of seems that I wouldn’t feel good about improving and playing well if I didn’t care about the violin at all. But at the same time, the degree of pleasure I derive from playing and practicing well is not enough to truly light me up inside, and in fact while I do feel good when I do well, I still feel dull and empty deep down. Maybe this is because the pleasure I feel is mostly based on the success that is playing/practicing/performing successfully, and not much on passion for playing the music. What seems to support this is when I have won violin competitions in the past, I felt the same pleasure up until some time after I had won each competition. But in retrospect, each of these successes feels rather hollow. In the same way, I felt I chased these competition victories just to chase success. In fact, the same could be said of my entire pursuit of violin-playing. I practiced because I wanted to be very good and because I wanted success. That was more of a motivation for me than was real passion for playing the violin, and that seems a red flag.

Also, I’ve noticed that for many months now, I haven’t really tried hard at the violin. I began to try much less at the violin when I began to suspect that I didn’t have a passion for it, a few months ago. When I’ve practiced these past few months, I’ve generally just messed around and not really practiced. I’ve also not been able to focus while practicing, and my mind regularly thinks about this random thing and that while I’m supposed to be practicing. What do you think this could mean? Might it indicate a lack of interest and passion in the violin? Conversely, could it mean that I haven’t given playing the violin a chance, and that I need to open my mind to it more? (Although, I don’t think the second possibility is true because before these few months, I devoted a lot of time, effort, and attention to the violin of my own accord, and that shows that my mind was quite open to it then.) Does it mean I’m not making enough of an effort? Or does it just mean that I can’t focus? (In fairness, I do have poor concentration generally across all work and activities that I do, and I get distracted easily and often, so this might be a general rather than a specifically violin-related problem.)

I am particularly worried that because I haven't really tried hard at the violin for months now that I would be quitting without even knowing if I am passionate about the instrument or not. Part of my mind says, "How can I have an idea of whether or not I am passionate about this if I haven't even opened myself to experiencing the violin in full recently, including practicing, performing, and so forth?" This way, I feel like I may make a mistake by quitting if I am not careful. Would I have a better idea of how passionate I am about this if I gave it more effort?

However, it must also be taken into consideration that I gave the violin a lot of time and effort in previous years, and in retrospect, I feel like while I tried very hard, I did so not because I was passionate about the instrument but because I just wanted success and to be very good at playing. But then again, is it possible to accurately tell my level of passion based on memories from years ago that are of experiences that may no longer even apply today?

Of course, there’s also this one: “But if I quit now, that will be so many years of my life wasted, and I’d feel very bad then.” I have this doubt despite the fact that if I am not passionate about the violin, there’s no sense in continuing to pursue it, and in spite of the fact that if I pursued the violin as my career, I would most likely be miserable. Although it is true I would feel bad if I quit now, I believe that is better than wasting more time in my life on something I am not passionate about. I also am repulsed by the idea of quitting something I have already become so good at, but once again, I think there isn’t much point in continuing if I’m not passionate about it.

Yet, all of this I’ve written is not to say I have no passion for playing the violin at all. I can and do sometimes enjoy playing a little bit, and I also enjoy listening to many kinds of music. I sometimes derive enjoyment from playing, and that confuses me occasionally because when I do enjoy myself while playing, I doubt all of this internal debate, and I wonder if I should just continue my studies at full speed. Simultaneously, however, I also believe that whatever enjoyment I derive from playing is not enough to carry me through my entire career. Which is true?

Additionally, one doubt that my father expressed about my potential quitting is that this may just be a temporary phase where I am repulsed by the violin for some reason, a “funk.” One part of my mind says this might be logical, because I have had funks in the past with the violin where I didn’t make much progress on the instrument, where I had a kind of fatigue and apathy around practicing, and where I felt tired of playing the violin. For this reason, I slightly doubt that quitting is the best move. However, I also feel that this particular funk I am in right now, if it can be called that, goes deeper than just being another temporary low point. I feel like I am not passionate about the violin. Honestly, I feel that even through all of the lows I have experienced throughout my years with the violin, I was never truly passionate about playing. I just pursued it to pursue it, and to chase success. That probably means I no longer need to continue with the violin.

Finally, I sometimes even think that I might still be passionate enough about the violin and about classical music to stay with my current course, and to continue practicing as much as I am each week. I'm not even sure if I'm passionate about this or not, and I fear that I'll make the mistake of quitting even though I might still have a tiny bit of passion for playing the violin. In my mind, this is another potential objection to quitting: “But I still do have some passion for violin playing and for classical music, so maybe I shouldn’t quit, or even reduce my pace; maybe I should continue trying to progress as fast as I can.”

The list of doubts and factors to consider in my mind goes on. As you can see, part of me wants to quit, while the other wants to not quit the violin and thus maintain the status quo in my life, and I don’t know how to make sense of the whole situation from a bird’s-eye-view. In fact, I don’t even quite know if I am truly passionate about the violin or not. Above all, the priority in my mind seems to be to not make a decision I will regret in the future. My biggest fear in all of this may be doing something I will regret in the future. Specifically, even though I feel continuing down the path of violin-playing would make me miserable in life, I still fear quitting, or even just cutting down how much time I spend on the violin. If I do either of those things, I fear I will regret not being able to play as well as I could have if I had practiced with the goal of becoming a professional, and regret not being able to harness as much beauty from my instrument as I could have. I understand that if I want to pursue something else, I must sacrifice the violin either in whole or partly, and that that is just a fact of life, but I still fear regretting my choice if I quit and forever being dissatisfied with my decision. If I do not go full speed ahead with my violin studies, whether because I quit or because I slow down, I will not become the best I could have become at the instrument, and I fear I will be discontented in the future because of that.

Now, to finally get to the point: Can any of you give me suggestions in my current situation, considering everything I’ve stated above? Does anyone have any responses to the questions and doubts I've raised? Am I passionate about the violin, truthfully? Is it even possible that two months is not enough time to make a decision, and that I should just bide my next time for the next year and make a decision after then? How should I proceed?

Thank you for your time.

[Gili Trawangan]

I wouldn't quit if I were you.

You've been given the opportunity to be world-class at something as cool as the violin. Not many people get that chance. You would be giving it up in favour of what? What is it that you are so passionate about that you need the time for? I mean, if there was something tangible that you wanted to dedicate yourself to instead of the violin, I would get it, but is there really? Unless I missed something from your post, I admit that I skimmed through it.

1 hour ago, N92 said:

Additionally, one doubt that my father expressed about my potential quitting is that this may just be a temporary phase where I am repulsed by the violin for some reason, a “funk.”

Plus I agree with this. Totally.

Your future self will thank you if you keep going, whether you end up becoming a professional violin player or not. That decision can be made much later. In the end, you will have mastered something, which is an achievement in itself.

[kinesin]

@N92 Passion comes and goes.  Infact the way it tends to work is there'll be a period of intense activity relating to the practice which may last for months or years, and it's then followed by a period of doubt and disinterest that can also last for months or years.  Allow yourself to stick with the practice through that down time though, and the passionate intense period will eventually come back stronger than ever, with new skills and insight which you'll later realize were a direct result of the down time you had.

The universe has given you a precious gift - truly, not many people get the opportunity to be world-class at anything.  If you decide during a temporary down time to make a permanent decision to quit, then at some point in your future you'll be haunted by the realization of just what you threw away.

[Applegarden8]

Dude I wish I was as skilled as I would with guitar if I started young. I would totally slay. Consider that statement. There is a lot going for you.  

Try new creative challenges, xenharmonic music, write violin for metal or jazz, add ridiculous effects, play more strings like cello and do a cool project, find or forge a unique sounding band e.c.t. YOU LITERALLY HAVE ALL THE SKILLS TO DO THAT.

[N92]

Before I reply to anyone, I'd like to say this. I posted my very long-winded and detailed message so I could receive advice from other people on a decision I am very confused about, because I realize I lack the life experience to make as good of a decision as I'd like to. Considering that, to disregard the advice I do receive and instead just try to push my own position without taking into account what others say would be foolish. With that said, I would like to clarify a few things, so here I go.

 

@Gili Trawangan I confess that in focusing on the possibility of quitting and its potential benefits, I had partially lost sight of the fact that I have the opportunity to be world-class at a particular discipline, which is a great prize in itself. 

I thought I would use the additional free time I got from stopping the violin to just study more, both in school-mandated subjects and non-school-mandated fields, including math, science, English, foreign languages, personal development, and more. As I mention in my initial post, I thought freeing up the time would give me a host of benefits related to time management: it would clean up my schedule, allowing me more time to do everything else I want to do, including exercise, studying self-help, eventually meditating, and so forth, and allowing me to be less stressed.

As I also mention, I am particularly concerned that with the violin and all of its related commitments, which can take hours a day, in my schedule, I will not be able to execute on all of my personal "absolute commitments." In many earlier Actualized.org videos (I don't know if this is true for the later videos, because I've not watched those), Leo mentions making 100% commitments to habits, most notably meditation, but also others, and never missing a single day. I have relied on this system thus far to build habits in my life, but one problem I've noticed with it is that on rare occasions, I have almost not had enough time on certain days to fulfill a daily 100% commitment, so I have already nearly failed my commitments a few times. I don't know if I'm obsessing too much over this danger, but assuming I'm not, if I maintain my current schedule, there will be times where I do fail to exercise, meditate, or do something every single day, and that may set me back. The only solution, then, seems to be to remove something from my schedule, whether it be the violin or something else. And there may not be "something else" to remove, considering my schedule already only consists of a few items, all of which I believe to be essential. So this reason was one of my bigger motives for potentially quitting.

If you're asking whether or not I already have something else I know I am passionate about to invest my time into, I do not. I figured that if I was not passionate about the violin, I might spend the spare time investigating to see what I'm passionate about. In fact, both my father and my violin teacher made a similar point to yours. They argued that I should not quit the violin until I have identified something concrete that I could use my time for. I suppose my counterpoint to their argument was that I would waste a lot of time on the violin, many hours per day and week, if I continue, time that I could spend more productively on other activities like finding my real passion. But actually, the validity of that counterargument of mine depends on whether I am passionate about the instrument or not, and whether the violin actually is a waste of time, both of which are exactly what I'm trying to ascertain through this entire inquiry. So, maybe I jumped the gun there a bit; my argument here may be either true or untrue.

[N92]

I understand that this may just be a temporary phase. I also have an idea of how much I might regret it if I do decide to quit now, and it is one of my biggest fears regarding this choice.

 

@kinesin To be sure, I do not want it to haunt me in the future that I threw away something very valuable that I will never get back. But this is my question, and part of what I'm trying to figure out by going through this entire process: is this just a temporary low point, or is it that I really never had much real passion for the violin? Perhaps I have passion for it; perhaps I don't. I think it's possible that even through all of my high points of achievement and enjoyment in my time with the violin, I never had a lot of true passion; instead, I'd posit that I achieved what I did through a desire for success and to be the best. Although, I don't mean by that that I never had any passion for playing, or that I didn't enjoy practicing and performing; I did enjoy it to some degree.

In other words, even with the presence of the cycle of passion you mention, I am afraid that cycle might not truly indicate passion. Reflecting on my experiences with the violin, everything I have done related to it seems quite empty and unfounded. Reflecting on those experiences does not light me up emotionally the way it seems it should; in fact I feel rather dull and bleak inside when I do this. This emptiness might indicate that I don't truly have passion for playing.

Then again, I might be completely wrong. It might be the case that I actually love playing the violin, and that something is blocking me from seeing that right now. As I said, I'm very confused about this, and I lack the necessary experience to make this decision.

[Gili Trawangan]

6 hours ago, N92 said:

I don't know if I'm obsessing too much over this danger, but assuming I'm not, if I maintain my current schedule, there will be times where I do fail to exercise, meditate, or do something every single day, and that may set me back.

Yes, you are obsessing too much over this.

It sounds like you're glamourizing Leo's videos and taking those ideas too seriously and too literally.

You say you want to have time for self-help, but most people who get involved with self-help are only really trying to get to the position you are already in. People want to develop self-discipline and to be able to master a craft of some sort, that's a big part of self-help. As for meditation, you can and should start slow, so 10-15 minutes a day shouldn't really be a problem for you. Regarding exercise, you're so young that you probably already do enough exercise without even trying. You don't really need much of it at this point.

All of those things are peanuts, anybody can do them. And you will have time for them in the future, if not now. What most people don't have is the opportunity that you've been given and seem to be taking for granted.

I understand you won't want to listen to strangers on the internet (why should you, really?), but do listen to the people who are close to you and care about you and have more life experience. And realize that, no matter how smart you are - and you do seem smart - you are very young and might not be seeing this clearly right now. And if you're not seeing it clearly, the best option is to keep going with the violin, and postpone this decision to a later time when it becomes clear to you.

[N92]

On 6/26/2021 at 9:40 PM, Gili Trawangan said:

I understand you won't want to listen to strangers on the internet (why should you, really?)

That's not entirely true. If it was, I would not have published my initial post. I've been using this thread as a means to get a wider range of perspectives and advice than I otherwise would have been able to, and it has given me at least a little more clarity.

 

On 6/26/2021 at 9:40 PM, Gili Trawangan said:

And realize that, no matter how smart you are - and you do seem smart - you are very young and might not be seeing this clearly right now. And if you're not seeing it clearly, the best option is to keep going with the violin, and postpone this decision to a later time when it becomes clear to you.

Your response has made me more aware of the fact that I'm not seeing the situation clearly, considering my lack of experience, so thank you. Thanks to the exhortations of everyone in my life and all of the other trustworthy information sources I have access to, I have postponed this decision at least until at least a month or two from now, and will very likely wait longer after that. 

 

Since I probably will stay with the violin now, I have two questions.

First, how should I approach studying and practicing the violin? More specifically, as I mentioned in my initial post, for the past few months, I've "fallen out of the groove" with my violin studies, and I've mostly messed around and not tried in my practice sessions. How do I get back on track?

What attitudes and mindsets should I approach the violin with which will yield the maximum benefit? How should I motivate myself to practice and to do well at everything related to the violin. How am I to motivate myself to put in the effort and work required, and to go through the tedium and emotional effort associated with practicing? I've done these things in the past consistently, but I worry that it will be hard to resume doing them after months of slacking off.

How should I regard my entire renewed endeavor to play the violin? Should I regard it for now as the chief potential passion in my life, until I find something I am more passionate about? Should I always aim to find the beauty in all the music I play? Should I aim to be the best I can at playing the instrument? I apologize if these are questions to which there are obvious answers, but I'd like to understand everything I can about this.

Beside these somewhat abstract, mindset-related changes, how should I approach the violin in my life in terms of structure? How much time should I devote to practicing a day? Should I try to apply full force to practicing and improving and progress as quickly as possible?

As for the second question, if I continue with the violin for now, should I allocate any of my resources to investigating and discovering what else I might be passionate about, and to getting the lay of the land in terms of all of the fields I could possibly go into besides the violin? If I eventually decide I'm not passionate about the violin, I probably don't want to be left without any knowledge of what else I love and without any other options. Or should I not worry about this for now and just focus on the violin?

[thisintegrated]

tl;dr?

Fine, I'll just guess an answer for you.

 

Wait for MIDI 2.0 Violins to come out.  They're gonna be sick!! 

They're gonna solve ALL your problems

Edited June 28, 2021 by thisintegrated

[N92]

Bumping thread.

[RendHeaven]

I'm 21. Played violin from age 4-17 and was in one of the most elite youth orchestras in America.

I quit because it simply was not fun to practice anymore. All of my goals were manufactured by my parents and teachers. Not once did I pick up the violin in order to meet my own desire.

I'm so glad I made the right choice. When you pursue a true passion, practice becomes effortless because you recognize that you're using your time in the best possible way.

[N92]

@RendHeaven Thank you for your reply.

Let me ask you this: Since you quit when you were 17, three years older than I currently am, how clear about your situation and your decision were you at age 17? How certain were you that the decision you rendered was a good one?

Also, may I ask how far you had advanced on the instrument by age 17, in concrete terms? (Did you attend any competitions, and if so, which ones? Which elite youth orchestra were you in? Performances? Etc.) I ask because I'd like to compare your level to what mine currently is, because that factor may be an important point to consider in my decision; I don't ask to be arrogant or snotty. If you had not advanced as far by that age as I have as of now, I might unwitting throw away more than you would have if quitting ends up being the wrong decision for me.

I might even ask, looking back, how mature and wise were you, relative to other 17-year-olds, when you made the decision? And ultimately, how mature do I seem to you when you look at what I have written? Mature enough to make a decision now, or should I hold off?

As user Gili Trawangan pointed out above, no matter my level of intelligence, I am very young and may not be perceiving this situation clearly right now, and it might be best if I waited more time to gain more life experience and thus see the matter more lucidly. I agree that I am not seeing the situation clearly right now due to my lack of life experience, and I'd very much like to avoid making a decision that I will regret in the future.

Playing, practicing performing, and so forth does not seem to light me up inside consistently or to a great enough degree for it to be viable as my future career. In fact, part of me thinks that I would be miserable if I pursued playing the violin as a full-time job. In addition to this lack of passion I perceive, there are other reasons I see, some related, that possibly indicate quitting is a good decision.

Yet, I simultaneously have many doubts about quitting. I'm even uncertain about my belief that I lack passion for the violin, and part of me still thinks I could plausibly pursue it as a career.

My point is this: Based on your experiences, whether I quit the violin or stay with it in the long run, do you think I should hold off on making a decision for now, and wait to become more clear about the situation? Or, if I end up quitting, should I do so now, so as to not waste any more time in these vitally important years of my life? Right now, I lean toward the former, waiting some time to make a decision, but what you do believe?

[Applegarden8]

21 hours ago, RendHeaven said:

I'm 21. Played violin from age 4-17 and was in one of the most elite youth orchestras in America.

I quit because it simply was not fun to practice anymore. All of my goals were manufactured by my parents and teachers. Not once did I pick up the violin in order to meet my own desire.

I'm so glad I made the right choice. When you pursue a true passion, practice becomes effortless because you recognize that you're using your time in the best possible way.

I picked guitar when I was 18 and its completely the opposite for me. Quite sad for you really.

[N92]

Bumping thread for further input (2nd time).

[FlyingLotus]

          I read your entire post.  Holy winning at life N92!  I know you’re at a confusing crossroad, but you’re insanely ahead of the pack (in case you didn’t know). There’s lots of excellent advice in this thread already, but here’s my two cents.

 

          Read “Open” by Andre Agassi.  He became a world class tennis player despite hating tennis.  He was driven by wanting to prove his dad wrong and a genuine love for competition, but not a love for tennis.  The autobiography doesn’t hold back.  A lot of high performer types say it’s one of their fav books.  I’m not saying that’s your exact situation, but it might hold a mirror to what you’re going through.

          It also sounds like you have black or white thinking going on.  Is it really true you can’t take a year long break, or is it just suboptimal to take a break?  It’s not like you’re in ballet, pro sports or modelling (I don’t know your industry).   It seems like you know you can do lots of other stuff with world class skills.  Saying “quit” violin rather than “take a break” seems like a black or white cognitive distortion (research cognitive distortions).  Would you really be “miserable” if you pursed violin, or would you have some challenges and make some pivots and detours to truly figure out what you want? 

          It sounds like time is your main concern in your decision.  Time is on your side.  You’re nine-freaking-teen.  Doing a program for a year that gets you world class at something isn’t a waste of time.  Playing video games on your moms couch and being high for a full year is.  Even if you did a ps4-potsmoking-sabbatical you could still bounce back from that, especially at your age.

          The logic side of me says stick it out for a year if it will give you access to unique opportunities or money you wouldn’t have access to otherwise.  Are there other areas of the industry you could go into?  Do you have to be a pro violinist, or could you teach or work on the business side?  Could you be a composer?  (again, I don’t know anything about your industry)  World class skills are pretty damn rare and valuable.

          You sound like a perfectionist.  That’s great, I’m one too!  It’s freaking awesome!  A lot of people would kill to be a perfectionist, to have excellence be their default.  The thing with perfectionism is it has to be channelled and managed properly to not become destructive.  You should check out “Pursuit of Perfect” by Tal Ben Shahar.  There are good summaries on youtube, but the book is 100% worth checking out if you’re a perfectionist or tend to attach your self worth to accomplishment.

          Also, there’s nothing wrong with enjoying success and accomplishment (unless you’re a murderer ).  Success is freaking great!  Enjoying something is different than attaching your self worth to it.

          It sounds like you have a true love for music, but you could be burned out.  It’s possible your burn out, perfectionism and black and white thinking is tainting that passion for music.  I personally think if you do therapy and focus on mental health or optimizing your psychology, you’ll discover you actually do love music.  You don’t have to quit violin to do that.  Leo's book list has books that could help you with that.  Therapy can help too if you can afford it.  

          I don’t know you of course.  I’m just some stranger on the internet, so you have to reflect on that yourself.  Also, get Leo’s Life Purpose course.  It’s worth every penny, especially at your age and situation. Yes, investigate what else you could be interested within the music industry and outside of it.  You can do all that without sacrificing your goals. 

Edited July 1, 2021 by FlyingLotus

[Willie]

If playing the violin doesn’t make you happy, you don’t have to continue. There are plenty other hobbies and career choices. I know I disappointed some family members when I stopped playing my french horn, but it stopped making me happy during college. When it turns from something you get to do into something you need to do, stop.

Edited July 2, 2021 by Willie