Wallitner Weekly 6

Hello everyone!

A lot of productive things happened this past week.

I have been working on videos and exercises for music theory. I have been teaching a lot of private lessons lately too. My students are all doing very well, which is a great feeling as a teacher. However, since they are doing so well I don’t think they will need my help for much longer! I will soon begin the search for even more students.

I have a lot planned for next week too!

I plan to continue to record and upload music theory videos. I also plan to reach out to as many high schools as I can to see if any of the music students are interested in online music theory lessons.

I have found that I really like teaching music theory/composition. I especially like teaching students that don’t think that music theory is important. I love getting my students to see the real world applications of music theory.

Not doing what you planned isn’t always a bad thing.

A few days ago I saw a video. The video was an interview with a Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) Dungeon Master (DM). For those of you who don’t know, D&D is a role playing game where you do quests and fight battles and things like that. The players can do basically whatever their DM allows, within the confines of the rules of the game. What is really cool about D&D is that the DM is also in charge of the story. There are pre-written stories that you could use, but the real fun as a DM is when you make up your own story.

In this interview the DM told a story about a session he had with his friends. The DM had spent WEEKS writing out this scenario for his players to go through. It started with this arranged marriage wedding that the players were attending and he went on to say how he had planned for the players to sit and watch the wedding. During this wedding they would unknowingly meet the main villain, which would lead to a series of plot twists and quests that was all very detailed and interesting.

BUT INSTEAD, his players noticed that the bride wasn’t that interested in marrying the groom. AND THEY KIDNAPPED THE BRIDE. This meant that the literal WEEKS of planing that the DM had gone through planning out the quests and creating the characters was wasted. But the DM went along with it and instead of meeting the villain and doing the quests he had planned, the group instead spent the session escaping the guards and learning about the princess. It did not go to plan for the DM at all, but they all had a great time anyway. It may have even gone better than he had originally planned.

At this point you’re probably wondering why I told this story about D&D and the DM’s plans failing. Well, my fiancée applied for a job on the west side of Washington. We had already been saving up to move because we were confident that she would get the job. We were very excited to move and be closer to family, but a few days ago we found out that she didn’t get the job. So we had been planning and hoping and budgeting to move, but now we’re not. And that’s probably for the best. It is WAY cheaper for us to live here in Yakima, which is great because we’re saving for a wedding. AND we both are starting to develop a great network within the school district. If we did end up moving it would have been much harder for us to save money AND we would not have been able to develop our network here.

There was another instance of things not going to plan this week too.

As some of you may know, this week I wanted to write a poem about mentos. Specifically, I wanted to write about how whenever I see mentos at the store I have to buy them because my grandfather (who passed away when I was 5) had convinced me that he MADE mentos. So whenever I would visit him he would give me some.

He convinced me he was magic. Even when he was bedridden he would make mentos “appear” from under his pillow. When he died, my family continued to give me mentos as gifts. They told me that grandpa had sent them down from heaven.

My grandmother still gives me mentos to this day. My grandfather is still magical, even though he’s been gone for nearly 20 years. But he’s not the only person who lives in a memory like that. I see so many different people in the way I speak. Or the way I behave.

While I was trying to write that poem about mentos, I ended up writing this poem:

I Am You

When I smile my nose wrinkles like my mother’s.

When I tell a story my hands move like my dad’s.

When I know something I teach it like my brothers.

When I cry I think of tears from the past.

I think of who I am today

And smile because I’m you.

I’m you and every other person

i’ve ever spoken to.

From the way I laugh like grandpa

Or hug like my sisters (in law).

I am the pieces of these people

Some parts of them rubbed off

On me I see my family,

My friends and those I’ve lost.

But since I see them here with me

They’re never truly gone.

This poem doesn’t even mention mentos. So by all means it’s a total failure. My plan totally failed. I totally failed. But that’s not actually true. Things not going to plan is not always a bad thing. I like this poem a lot even though its not what I originally had hoped to write.

Thats how life is sometimes. Sometimes the best things are not what you planned. Sometimes the best poems are the ones you didn’t mean to write.