Life interferes with Art: Beethoven on hold

As it is the last day of February (the 29th!) I am due to report on the progress of my Beethoven Sonata project. I am trying to learn one new Sonata each month, with the goal of having them all in my fingers in about a year-and-a-half. This month I decided to learn op. 31#1, a wonderful piece while not quite the life-altering experience of op. 111 or op. 57. It isn't quite as far a long as I'd like it to be, mostly because my progress was interrupted by some surgery. It wasn't a life-threatening procedure, though I was nervous anyway (first time to have any surgery), and I was not quite at 100% for a while.

But I DID get the notes learned fairly well (I was hoping to have the piece memorized, but no luck) since I worked hard on the piece at the beginning of the month, prior to my surgery. At the time, the little red devil whispering in my ear said "Why hurry - you have the whole month!" while the other part, fortunately, won over and convinced me to practice right away, while I could.

So the moral of the story is: take advantage of time when you have it. I have already admitted to being a terrible procrastinator, one who has succeeded too many times in getting things done at the last minute and so I am not quick to change this. And in the context of non-urgent tasks (see Stephen Covey) like my Beethoven project, it is all too easy to let those things slide when life interferes with realities like surgery or flight delays or any other unexpected events.

So I'm hoping to catch up in March (while also playing a lot of repertoire unrelated to this project) AND to keep forging ahead, maybe with an easier sonata like op. 14#1 or op. 49#2. We'll see how it goes - wish me luck!