What’s Your Story in Music?

I got caught up in what one very critical, important person in my life thinks of me. A lot of us have someone like this in our lives, and I’m getting used to the idea that people who are close to us might not always know the best for us.

We say we don’t want to care what others think of us, but it’s a cute little lie because we all know that we care to some extent about what people think.

All conversations are meaningless unless you care. Even though I by no means have a shortage of friends in the city, I felt like not only was I not accomplishing anything meaningful, and worst, that no one cared that I wasn’t accomplishing anything meaningful.

If someone sent me a “hi, hope it’s going well”, I would’ve been really happy that someone had been thinking about me at some point in the day.

Smalltalk is only small unless you don’t mean it, and I encourage you to take a few seconds to reconnect with someone you care about with even the simplest of greetings. If I didn’t play piano as an outlet so often, I would’ve really needed that extra care.

One person sent me this psychology article where people who avoided trivial smalltalk like “what do you do,” and instead engaged in more substantial conversations, rated themselves as happier. 

It suggests asking “what’s your story” when you meet someone instead.

I like to say that I don’t care what others think of me and my story, but the reality is that I will always care to some degree. Our lives are complicated stories, and if anyone will genuinely listen for sixty seconds while you fumble to distill your life story into 60 seconds, then perhaps they’re worth another sixty seconds of your time.

Each person’s story is so exceptionally different, and this blog is a part of mine. What’s your story?

If I’m being frank, the messages I got from everyone in the community after the last article went live were hard to read at first.

But I was blown away by everyone’s kindness, and I’d like to share some of this kindness to make someone else’s day better! Some comments are here, if you’re interested.

I’d also like to share some resources from the community…

1. I’ve recently had the pleasure of spending an evening at Renegade Productions’ Rent and it’s a delight to see local, rising stars perform. If you’re in Vancouver, take a look at their page for upcoming performances!
Here’s a photo from Rent taken by Renegade Productions. It was my first time seeing this musical, but I recognized some famous tunes in it. The actors were friendly afterwards and overall the team is down to earth, and the production set was creative. For example, I recall that they turned one of the pillar covers to denote the passage of time after each scene.

2. If you’re in the mood to listen to some relaxing piano music, When Leaves Dance by Shoshana Michel is a beautiful piano solo!

3. I wrote a short music sketch a while ago and I have sheet music for it, in case you want to do a little sight reading! Click here to get the free sheet music.

4. Lastly, I’d like to thank some people for helping with Artiden for the past year. I’d like to thank Molly Rahal for being an kick-butt person and helping out with the blog last year. She helped with making sure blog posts go out at the right time, and nagged me when they didn’t!

I’d like to thank Amy Truong for being a great editor in the past year; she’s so smart and funny!

I’d like to thank Grace Rose for being supportive and fun with making sure blog posts go out, and being super duper encouraging!

And I’d also like to thank Daniel Cheng for all the pretty graphics you see on the blog posts! Almost all of them are his work now; I focus on the writing these days. He’s so talented.

I’d also like to thank everyone who’s supported me from around the world, people in the community who leave comments and emails and messages–Mike, Mark, Maria, Bob, Maya, Joey, Carol, Carolyn, Jocelyn, and many more people! Thanks to everyone who’s written to me or sent me things too.

And thanks to YOU for being great. :)