I make an experiment today, to live a day free from expectations and to-do-list. Just to have a day listen to my heart and my mind, to re-evaluate what make me happy? I took off my expectations and my ambitions to exam again what is important to me?
How my day would be?
I woke up, read a book while listening to black bird singing until I am satisfied to really get up. A big surprise to me that coffee was not the first thing I want after wake up. Still, coffee got the second place after reading.
Today I have a cloudy rainy day, isn’t it perfect to make sunny-side-up-egg to brighten up the day? During my breakfast, I wrote to friends about random stuff and ask for recipe, thinking new content for my blog. Looking out window and could not stop appreciating the raindrops on the roses and black bird playing in my garden.
After that, automatically, I took out my organ music score, start checking the fingering and practice a bit on my E-piano. During the short pause between, I cleaned the kitchen, collect my laundry. I realized that, doing housework could be relaxing for my mind, if I am not under time constraint.
Finished spending time with organ music score, I am preparing a surprise piano piece for a friend. It is very satisfying to make someone that important to me happy with music.
To relax, I watched videos on YouTube. To share with you what I like to watch recently:
1. TwoSet Violin – I like the way they portray classical musician life with comedy and introducing classical music to wider audience. There is one episode with Uncle Roger,so funny. Link: https://youtu.be/qggNgiAiluo
Note: Uncle Roger is a Malaysian comedian based in London, he is famous for his reaction over BBC Food – Fried Rice.
Another episode, serious video which is important, about musician mental health:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFhSHlNvZlQ
2. Papi 酱 – A Chinese talented content maker, she is very good at satirical comedy, always hit the nail on the head in an extreme humorous way. This is one episode about endless political correctness on art. Link: https://youtu.be/DhX0Ed253yE
3. Jacob Collier – I guess most of you know him and his songs. By chance, I bumped into his music theory teaching video on YouTube. I found the way he explain music theory is very interesting. The knowledge is not new to me, but the way he introduce it made me sit on piano to try it out, reharmonizing a song or may be one day I will try to write a song? One of those music theory videos link: https://youtu.be/NpXXwCQEFTc
After that, I talk to my friends in England, they have their hats on and sitting outside under the big sun. They given me new inspirations for navigating life, cooking and baking.
Inspired by my friends, I went for grocery shopping. I spent a great amount of time standing before ice-cream shelves. Shall I get my all time favourite ice cream or try a new flavour? A difficult question!
After that, I made pan-fried salmon sandwich for dinner as my friend suggested. Yummy!
Look at the music for worship service tomorrow with a glass of innocent orange juice. Drinking innocent juice is a habit that I started since my Bristol (UK) year. I was very happy when I discovered innocent juice in German grocery store for the first time.
Eating ice-cream while typing this post. Recently I found out my previous blog that I’ve written during my Beijing years. I am amazed and proud that I keep writing since the year 2005. It touched my heart, I have been to so many places even changed my profession twice, I am so fickle but one thing unchanged is writing. Yeah, I do not know where is home to me, but I am at home when I write. Following this logic, you’re my guest in my home when you’re reading my blog. A beautiful imagination, right?
Conclusion is, other than less working, the day is nothing much different from my day to day life, only it is very relaxing and I feel I am healed. It is like playing music with the right tempo, not too fast that I feel stress to run after, and not too slow to keep me going.