When I sat down to play the piano, after not having played for years, I suddenly remembered why I quit in the first place. I have no piano. Apparently I sold my piano when I moved out of Austin, TX.

So as I sat down to play my mom's baby grand, a Baldwin, which I despise (but I'll probably inherit anyway), I realized that the reason I stopped playing is because my hands were always so cold, and I could not move my fingers well. My dad keeps the house so goddamn cold all the time that you have to wear sweaters and gloves and all kinds of clothes to stay warm. Which fricken sucks. When I'm inside, I want to be able to run around in no more than shorts and a t-shirt, preferably underwear. I'm not "bundling-up" inside like some idiot. It is ridiculous that in this day and age I have to feel like I'm living like the pilgrims of 17th century Massachusetts. For god sakes man if you had turned up the fucking heat to even 60 degrees instead of opening the refrigerator door to warm the house I may have been able to actually become pretty good at the piano, instead of being the suck-ass player I am today.

But wait, I read somewhere that Beethoven used to soak his hands in hot water to warm them up, and all those guys played on crappy instruments, so I have no excuse. Yeah, but that's Beethoven. Then there's me. Ask me to play something - I can't play shit despite years of music lessons. My teachers would have saved me a bunch of headache if they had just said to me "man, you can't play shit", instead of "I'll see you next week". But then they wouldn't be getting paid, so I guess they really needed the money. Which brings up another thing - if my teachers were so desperate for money that they would actually put up with my awful hacking without running away screaming in frustration and agony, then a career in music was probably not the way I wanted to go. So maybe that's why I quit, not because I was actually completely tone deaf, but because there were so many others, some with incredible talent, genius even, despite which I never heard about them again - no recordings, no concerts, nothing. Which really says something about how hard it is to make it in the business.