Fame

Sometimes I wonder if I'll ever be famous in the way that I hope I will, for songwriting or being witty or something to that effect. I wonder more often, however, if I have the guts to do what is required to make the leap from ordinary to extraordinary. Most people who meet me would classify me as a Gryffindor, to use Harry Potter values of virtue. I'm loud, blunt, fun, very honest, and generally a good person. However, as years of reading fanfiction continues to inform me, most Headmasters of Hogwarts were Slytherins. Uh oh spaghetti-o.

What if I lack the ambition to succeed in the girl-eat-girl world of the entertainment world? What if I'm doomed to forever play music in some awkward downtown location with a band called the Unshaven Pirates? Well, Will Smith (and my father) would say that one needs the drive to work harder than you've ever worked before on every project. Pick one thing to specialize in, and work your ass off so badly that you pwn everyone else in the field. That's what my dad wanted me to do when I was seven, and extremely talented in piano. He wanted my mom to become a stage mom and take me from Carnegie Hall to Juilliard to wherever else. In this fantasy of his, we could always afford this, and my talent would be recognized by the entire world (or as close as he could get to that).

That's fantastic. My mom was of a different opinion, though, and she was the one who was actually on-the-ground in the situation. My dad, you see, lives in North Carolina. No biggie for most situations, but when his request was that my mom quit her job and work her ass off to further my career (which I did not want at the time), she did not take his suggestion well. She stopped taking me to piano lessons because I stopped practicing and told her I didn't want to go anymore. She decided that it wasn't worth the time and money to take me to lessons I did not want. Her reasoning was that if it wasn't fun, I probably wouldn't want to do this in a few years anyway.

But I was just thinking about how lots of models have these discovery stories like..."I was walking with a friend when [very famous fashion photographer/designer] saw me and decided that i was his muse." And I realized that either the old days had ugly people everywhere, or this had to be a lie. Honestly, any career in the arts takes more than just talent, as Will Smith says, it takes skill. Hours and hours of practice that I have not done recently. However, that's going to change, because I am going to practice every day; writing and playing my repertoire. I am determined not to fail myself when I have the time.