Come hither.

I keep fresh flowers in the house.

This is important.

I am under renovation and half the house looks like it's under construction...because it is.

Yet, there are fresh flowers in the house. Why?

1. It's not as expensive as you think it is:
   
   This bouquet (which was bigger when I bought it) cost $3.50 from the Kroger on Southfield and Dix in Lincoln Park, Michigan. It's in the flower clearance section--enter the store, turn right immediately, and go past the plants all the way to the little cash register thing.
   
   If you change the water every day, these bouquets will last a week.
   
2. When I walk into my home, the environment feels uplifted.
   
   Fresh flowers say, "Breathe deeply". Fresh flowers say, "Beauty lives here".
   Right now, with all of this *gestures to the world* going on, walking into my home and immediately feeling peace and wonder is worth the 14 quarters.
   
3. SAD persists. Seasonal affective disorder ain't no joke, and I have learned to mitigate it with flowers (and sun spectrum light bulbs)(and an increase in salad consumption and physical, intentional movement).

This isn't about the flowers.

Your environment is your staff paper, your digital audio workstation, your music notation software (these are composing tools). My point that I am lamely making is that you get to create your environment which will invite you to play more, engage more, retreat into your vision, bloom where you're planted, glow up as you need/want/desire to.

And it doesn't take much. For me, it's fresh flowers.

Teachers, glance around your studio or your private piano playing place.

Does it make you want to play? Does it make you shine? Does it make you smile when you travel past it?

Whenever I walk past my piano, I wanna slide onto the bench and git down wit it--there's nothing impeding its path, the bench is always clear, and sometimes I have a fresh bottled water on the floor next to the pedals for the next time I sit down.

That's a come-hither if there ever was one, for pianos.

What's that for you?

Call to Action:

Take five minutes--literally five minutes...set a timer--and imagine what it would take to get your playing area feeling inviting and warm and seductive to you, to make you want to play.

If you can do it in a couple of minutes, do it. If it'll take longer, schedule it.

If yours is already like this, take a picture. Share it with your students or fellow teachers. Send it to me. I'll exalt it, for sure.

Love on it, for you are quite fortunate--every day I speak to someone who says they would love to have a piano, much less be able to play one, and here we are, having pianos and playing them.

Show your piano that you know what you've got. Let your room know that you love it.

And watch your studio grow.

We teach this.

We offer piano lessons, we write and deliver curriculum to K-12 and post secondary institutions, and we support educators to become better educators. I'm a woman in STEM (math, baby!) AND a pianist (what?!?) so I'm artsy and data driven and creative and vision-oriented while logical and funny. Contact us at Lessons@ThePianoInstructor.net and at 1.313.687.4433.