How I left and then came back
A few years ago, I started taking piano lessons again after a 30-year hiatus. It felt like a homecoming. It was wonderful! I hadn't realized how much I missed playing the piano until I started again. Don't get me wrong; I never took a break from making music. I had been singing for all of those years. I was in the choir at my church, and I even took voice lessons for a while. Then my vocal teacher moved away. I tried hiring a new teacher, but she and I simply didn't work well together. So I went back to just singing in the choir. I had two issues that kept me from my piano for all those years. As a young adult, I had dreadful performance anxiety. I went to a small college with un-insulated practice rooms. I did not want anyone to hear me practicing. I was dreadfully self-conscious about it, even though the building was isolated from everything else on our rural campus. Only the other musicians would ever hear me. One day, my piano professor poked his head into the roo...