What does a person blog? Anything they want I imagine. Not much worth saying, even less worth hearing. I have been inspired by my friends Kraus and Mike to blog--heaven help us all.

I played my last wind ensemble concert tonight. For those of you who aren't band geeks I'll clarify: I'll never play drums again. Much like a graduation but much more painful. Imagine that which your life centers around, everything you are accustomed to ending, be it a person, a sport, music or a hobby. Like some pathetic hometown hero I now have to wake up and face the reality of different, if not bigger or better, things. I don't know which is more pathetic, that I am sad my days of drumming are over, or that I am already planning the day I will have my own house with my own piano and marimba.

There is something amazing in being part of a really great ensemble. There is something fantastic in making great music. When you stand on stage, the audience ceases to exist, the moment stretches, elongates until time is measured in the beats of the conductor's wand and your body is no longer controlled by you but by the music. It flows through the air, a palpable thing that enters through your ears, filling you from your toes up until it bursts from your eyes and mouth and hands onto the drum where rhythms explode with the winds, vibrating the bones of the auditorium. In that moment life becomes something greater than existence. In that moment life becomes worth living. That is what I will miss. That is what I will never regret.

I will never lament what is no longer mine. There will be times, misty-eyed I will listen to others play and fondly remember my time, but my life will continue, evolve. I share it with you now that you might understand why a person would devote over of third of her young life to drums and music. I share it with you now because it is one of the greatest feelings in the world. Que bonita.