Hello, myself from the future.
As you know, I have left behind many things in the past. When college started, I dropped music and sports almost altogether completely. Even to this day, I still have not picked up my flute or went outside to run. Sports, and especially playing the flute, has been a big part of my life for more than half a decade. When I dropped those things, I wondered if I would regret that decision. However, after almost a year in, I can't say that I do regret it. There are times when I look back at my old racing videos and professionals play music that I think back at those good old days. However, I also remember the pain and suffering auditioning and preparing for races got me. I think it is a love-hate relationship. But in the end, I am trying to go to medical school. I know that these things will bring about more stress and time-consumption than benefits. I think I made the right call in leaving those things in the past. Perhaps one day I will resume those activities again, but for now, I have other priorities in mind.
While I am on the topic of music and past life, I do recall that many of my worst experiences of high school came from music.
To start off, I have always had a bad time in my high school band. I feel like my talents were always overlooked and scuffed at by my band directors. But I would like to believe that it made me stronger and constructed me as a self-made man. I had a horrible chair (5th) in the lower band during my freshman year. Following that year, I could not even get the first chair in that same band while all of my peers were moving up to the honors band. In my junior year when I finally got in that honors band, I had second to last chair. It was finally in a senior year that I got the rightful first chair in the honors band. But getting there only made me more anxious and nervous. The pros for getting first chair in band is that you get all the solos and high notes. That is also the Cons for me, however. I hate high notes because I could never get them in tune. I hate solos because it puts me in the spotlight that I do not want to be in. But thankfully, Covid-19 came in clutch to save me from those dank high notes.
I have countless more terrible experiences in music that I will write more about later, but for now, I have one more frustration to share in this post. The real reason why I quit music altogether is because of that one fateful night. The Award Ceremony. I believe that I have a great story. I am a man who nobody believed in but has exceeded everyone's expectations. I started from the bottom and in the end, I reached the top. I made history at my high school, being the first and only (by far) flute/woodwind player to go to All-State all three years of my high school life. There was only one thing I wanted for my accomplishments in the end. And that was recognition. Recognition for my journey to get to the top. I simply wanted an award from the band director.
Every year in the award ceremony, the band director gives a couple of specific awards to exemplary seniors to recognize them for their success. All I wanted was one award. But I received nothing that night. It was then I realized that everything was unfair. I worked extremely hard to get to the top and what did I receive? Nothing. The reason why I quit music is that music gives me nothing but regret and disgust for the injustice I get in the end. On paper, I am probably one of the greatest music players that school, no, the entire district has ever seen. But in the end, in the eyes of my band director, I was nothing but a regular flute player who got lucky in his auditions.
Maybe this was just an excuse for me to stop playing the flute. But the fact that I never received recognition felt like a knife in my heart. For months afterward, I felt nothing but cold resentment towards my band director. Even to this day, I hate him for what he did. I hope one day I can go back and ask him why he chose to single me out like that. I worked hard but why was it that the slackers and terrible musicians received prestigious awards and not me?
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