mandy inchaustegui

Growing up in a musical family, taking piano lessons was an understood rite of passage. Beginning in kindergarten and going all the way through my senior year of high school, every week, one day after school, I would have a half-hour lesson. Most of the time, I really liked learning how to play. There was, however, a huge turning point for me at about 6th grade.

Around this stage, the music began to get more challenging and I was really having to work if I wanted to get better. I could keep playing the “kids” stuff or I could push through, learn some new skills and a whole new world of material I could play would be opened up to me.

Both my piano teacher and my parents knew this to be true, knowing how much I would enjoy what was on the other side of this developmental hill. So, they did what good coaches do…they encouraged and pushed me to work hard and press through. Not having something come easily for me was a new and pretty uncomfortable experience. I hated it. And besides that, I wasn’t quite sure that I wanted to press through. Why? Wasn’t where I was at good enough?

I began to get really frustrated and discouraged and felt like the encouragement was pressure. Since I have a natural tendency to want to please people and often really care about what people think about me, I pushed through with the motivation of pleasing my piano teacher or my parents.

Even though I was getting to play more challenging and fun pieces, I still wasn’t enjoying playing because I was doing it to please someone else and not because I wanted it. I brought up wanting to quit taking piano all together, thinking that would solve my problem. Yet, I still really enjoyed playing and honestly did want to intentionally get better. I just wanted it to be for me and because I wanted to play, not because someone else wanted it for me.

I remember processing through all of this as a twelve year old, making the conscious acknowledgment that I did like playing the piano and that I did want to improve. I began to own my reason for playing. I did not want to do piano competitions or perform. I loved playing because it was an escape for me. I loved making beautiful music, expressing my emotions through the songs I played. I would go into our music room for hours, playing and thinking through what was going on in my life. Later, I was able to play in all sorts of places, doing accompaniment for kids’ choirs and being on worship teams. I enjoyed being able to use my talents to serve others.

This was a significant turning point for me. I began to enjoy playing again and pushed through that developmental hump, opening myself up to so much more that I could play and do. Playing the piano was incredibly helpful for me, going through my teenage years. As an adult, I miss having that outlet probably more than I’m even aware of.

All of this was brought to mind as I’ve been processing through my reason to blog. I haven’t posted in a while and I get encouraged to do so by others pretty often. One of my best friends has recently asked me some pretty powerful questions as to why I don’t blog, as I was sharing with them some of the things I was reading and learning. Usually, people encourage me to blog after I share something like that, knowing that the things I’m thinking about and processing through might be helpful to a larger audience. Yet, I’ve been afraid of blogging for a lot of the same reasons I wanted to quit piano: fear of not being perfect, fear of what people will think, and feeling pressure to please and perform. I’ve been “quitting” on this for some time now. How could I have been wiser at twelve than I am at 33? That young woman has been pretty convicting to me lately!

So, here’s the processing now. I need to write for me. Because I enjoy it and it’s a healthy outlet for me. In the same way that my playing and practicing changed when I stopped pressuring myself to be perfect, I can write simply because I enjoy writing. What is perfection in that anyway?

And the truth is, the more I write, the better I will get and the more I will enjoy it. And the more I will be able to serve and help others. If I would have stopped playing in 6th grade, I would have missed out on a lot of opportunities that came later for me that were really rewarding. The same is probably true with this. I will never know what might be missed because I didn’t take the risk to get over this new developmental hump for me.

So, here’s to a new risk. Writing because I want to and I like it. Posting it in a blog because I enjoy sharing what I’m learning and processing through. I really do hope that it is actually helpful for someone. But more importantly, it’s helpful for me. I’m ready now to enjoy the journey!