Welcome back and thank you so much for taking the time out to read my blog. I hope you be inspired by the small nuggets I write and declare. Stay tuned and remember always come back and check out my blog for Blog Wednesdays.

Some of you may know that I went to a performing arts high school. The school range from grades 6-12. So,  at about 9 years old I started fumbling around with a toy keyboard that I had gotten for Christmas. I would spend hours playing and carrying it around the house and pretty soon I was able to play back what I heard from the radio and TV. I was able to pluck out the melody. My parents caught on to this, and said “maybe there’s something here”. So next Christmas I got a 61 Keyboard and was able to play some of the songs the keyboard came with. After seeing my interest in piano, my parents decided to have me audition for the Emerson School Performing Arts school in Gary, IN as a piano major. I remember the audition like it was yesterday. I came to the school highly prepared with my boombox, because I was going to play along with the track.

I walked in, set down and the piano teacher begin asking me a few questions and then I sat at a baby grand piano for the first time in my life. She asked what I was going to play and I replied ” Donnie McClurkin’s We Fall Down”. So I pressed play on my boombox and begin to play it. At that time I thought I was doing some big stuff, but I only played the melody using both hands!!!! I didn’t know what the word melody was or octave or anything. After a few weeks I received a letter in the mail, saying congratulations I had been accepted and at that moment my musical journey began.
I want to introduce to some my piano teacher and friend Judith Neville. She was indeed the piano teacher at the audition who seen the gift inside me and took a chance on letting me into the school. I didn’t know how to read music, or understand any terminology going in, but I owe it to her for being an amazing Teacher. You always hear the term, teachers don’t make enough. I always took the saying literal because most teachers I seen had nice cars but it wasn’t about the money. Teachers are mothers, fathers, counselors, therapist, and so much more to the students that they teach.

I’ve said enough about me but I want to dedicate this blog to my teacher Mrs. Neville. She’s now moved into one of her dreams and now has her own piano studio in Valparaiso, IN.

I want you all to visit her site and if you are in the area and are looking to take lessons, this is the place to do them!

Clicking below will take you to her website.

The past week I had conversations with many people and the same thing kept coming up. I would realize how someone was scared to break tradition or ritual in order to make something better or even to finish a task. How could we get caught up in keeping up with the way we’ve done something and not get stellar results or no results at all.

Don’t get me wrong, some traditions are good and can become customary such as family gatherings and such, but I’m talking about in everyday life. If you know the ending to your process doesn’t get you results then why keep doing it. It’s sort of like a parent teaching their child how to ride a bike and how to balance their weight and pedal. Some parents like mine, put training wheels on my bike, so I was able to ride without no worries… but the process hasn’t been complete, by tradition I know that when I rode my bike that I would be secured due to the training wheels. Taking the training wheels off would get me through the process and eventually I would learn to ride the bike without them.

Some of us stay at stage 1 in life and keep our training wheel on.

I shout it out today for you to Be Open. Open to receive and learn. Learning never stops at any age. We tend to put limits on ourselves about what were not going to do anymore because we felt like were just too old for that. So we box ourselves in and stay closed.

The precious gift that was given to us was life and one thing about life, it’s going to go on with you or without. Notice, every single day the human body changes and constantly adapt. Even if you decided not to come out the house for twenty four hours, your body still would shift, and change.

So why not be open and accept the moment and move Forward.

Ladies and Gentleman, I encourage you all to Be Open!