I feel a change coming on. It is an odd sensation, or possibly just an odd expression. It’s not as though I have a trick knee that reacts to sudden shifts in barometric pressure. The change I have in mind has nothing to do with the weather. Nevertheless I’ve been having the impression for some time now that a change is coming.
It is more like a hunch than a direct sensation, something that has me looking at things out of the corner of my eye and wondering whether this is it. It generally isn’t. But it is hard to shake this feeling. I feel like I need to be ready for something, ready to react quickly or possibly to be the initiator, given the right conditions. I must be coming to a tipping point, something that will send me off in a new direction. I’m not there yet, but I appear to be readying myself, getting set to spring. What will trigger it? I don’t know. I just feel a change coming on.
Typically, in the face of uncertainty, I make lists. The transition to a new calendar year promotes this habit. I tend to look back at the year just passed and make a fresh assessment of its actions and events as a prelude to setting goals for the year ahead. That list of course, my list of goals for a year, is always an open-ended document. On the 2009 edition I note a few additions. One of those has to do with reacquainting myself with the classical piano repertoire; this because for the first time in more than 25 years I have a piano at my disposal. It is no small challenge for me to (re-)establish the habit of practising: the hours spent on technique just to get my fingers in to shape; the embarrassing forays into pieces I used to play all those years ago; the need for more realistic goals and scheduling and a more modest initial set of pieces to work on. And every time I touch the keys I hear both the echoes of my youth and the more mature re-sounding which informs me that I can now choose my new relationship with the keyboard, I am not bound by what I did or didn’t do years ago.
I am not bound by what I did or didn’t do years ago. Maybe that’s it. Maybe that realisation has sparked this feeling of a change coming on. Maybe it is part of the realisation that the conditions for change are in my hands now. I can choose my own direction. I’m ready for it.
I feel a change coming on. A change for the better.