I have been burned out on practicing. Since I played the Edwin Lamar arrangement of "Danse Macabre" in October of last year, I haven't sat down and played for hours. There are two parts to this issue. Firstly, I'm distracted by building instruments, and in my work on a major new sample set that I'm trying to get released. Secondly, and more importantly, I realized that I was caught up in what all the cool kids are playing. Difficult works by Reger, orchestral transcriptions, modern music... I've realized that while these can be part of my practice, I do need to work on music that feeds my soul and where I can see progress. So I learned most of the first movement of the B flat Mendelssohn sonata this morning. It felt good to sit down for 3 hours and just work on something where I saw progress. I also went back to my favorite Hauptwerk instrument, the CUI Casavant. It is a great practice instrument, and since I incorporated a metronome into the sample set, it makes it that much more versatile and appropriate for learning music.
Showing up is half the battle. Looking forward to showing up by doing something you want to do instead of what you have to do makes it way easier to show up in the first place.
