Another project of Performing Musician’s Guild (PMG), an org in our company, is to host voice and guitar lessons. They were both held today, and despite typhoon signal number one, I dragged myself to the office to attend them both. In the morning we had voice lessons.
All my team mates (from cluster 3) — Jo, Kris, and Jewel, except for Michelle, had signed up for it. Our voice coach, Sharon, whom I had met during last Thursday’s acquaintance party, used to teach at Center for Pop, one of the most popular (and most expensive) voice schools in the country. She taught us how to use our diaphragm so that we can discover our “new voice.”
She made each one of us sing out the word “balot” and when it was my turn, she said my voice had good quality, and that, thanx to the techinique she taught, I sounded so much better than last Thursday. Mark, our org president, agreed. After “balot” she had each one of us singing along with a minus one song. Sadly for me, I wasn’t able to sing “Reason Enough” well enough. I need practice. Lots of it.
In the afternoon, Jewel and I joined the guitar clinic though we brought no guitars because Mark said they had some extras to lend. The guitar instructor was also a professional from the 
Yamaha school of music.
He taught us about the parts of the guitar and how to tune it, how to hold it, how to strum it. He also taught a few basic chords and gave us a sheet of chords to memorize and practice on our own.
Man, I didn’t realize how damn hard it was to play the guitar. For starters, you have to cut your nails really short and press on the strings really hard to the point that they cut into the flesh of your fingers. Ouch. Plus the positioning of the fingers for the different chords is no piece of cake either.
Suddenly I have renewed respect for my dad and my brother, who are both good guitarists. I actually regret that I didn’t learn all this from them. But then again, I really have no discipline when it comes to this sort of thing.
Aside from not learning the guitar, there were a few other things that I could’ve learned but I didn’t quite finish. When I was in kindergarten, my mom enrolled me in ballet. I don’t remember if I stopped due to me or our finances.
Another thing my mom enrolled me in was piano lessons. Those lasted longer, and I got a bit good. But I was a really lazy kid and I preferred to play with my barbie dolls than practice on our organ. After a while my parents realized it was futile, so they stopped sending me to piano lessons and eventually sold the organ, which was suffering from non-use.
I also had plenty of opportunities to be part of a choir, but I didn’t like taking time out from school to go to Church for the practice sessions.
I don’t know if I have attention deficiency disorder, but it just seems as though I rarely finish anything I start (unless it’s a school project that has a definite deadline). I’ve written plenty of first chapters of novels. I’ve started a cross stitch project and stopped halfway though. I initiated getting swimming and scuba diving lessons then didn’t push through. I get all sorts of ideas about learning a new lesson, or starting something new.
But in the end, all I end up accomplishing is the beginning. And I am left with tons of unfinished business.
And now there’s another one to add to my list — guitar lessons. I’m not gonna buy a guitar. I don’t think i have what it takes to be a guitarist. I just hope that someday, I won’t look back and heave one big sigh of regret. I always put off everything for tomorrow. But one day, tomorrow may not come. What’s so annoying is…how come I’m not panicking? =(