Today's piano journal entry

Keeping a piano journal is vital for monitoring your progress.

Today's journal entry is about gratitude. Usually it's about some song I worked on, but the feeling of gratitude is the reason, I think, that my music comes out differently. I think it's also why my teaching is different from most people's​​​.

I don't have any illusion about how long any of us are going to live, so I act like it. As best as I can, I extract and give as much fun to the moment as possible. I act like we all might be gone in a moment...I act as if tomorrow isn't promised.

Because it isn't.

And then when I discover we are still here, I'm so happy.

Today's entry is about gratitude for my homestead.

It is 6:30 a.m., and I am sipping a very mediocre hazelnut latte with coconut milk from Tim Horton's as I wait for Lowe's to deliver my water heater.

I'm sitting at the piano, on the bench, in front of the keys. Sometimes this is the most calming place for me. I am not playing anything yet. But it feels like music is being generated anyway.​

Today is the fifth anniversary of the purchase of my house. My name is on the deed. No bank has a claim on it. And she knows I love her.​

Music comes in many forms. The symphony of cold air from the central air unit, the bird songs outside,the mechanical hum of the fridge, and the pah-pah-pah of padded kitty feet on the stairs is glorious.

May this feeling of sublime gratitude never wane.

Indeed.