Ooh, brace yourself. I think this is my most personal (and long-winded) post yet.

I used to channel my emotions and feelings into music. Something bothering me? Turn it into a tune. Something making me angry? Take it out on the piano. Feeling sad? Write it into some harmonies. Play some Debussy. Improvise something.

This was a habit for as long from pretty much as long ago as I can remember until about 5 or 6 years ago – although channeling my emotions into writing music was something I started doing when I was about 12 or 13.

I suppose it was a good way of getting those feelings and emotions out without having to vocalise them, but I still dealt with them in my own way. It was my form of therapy, my coping mechanism – and for the most part, it worked.

When I stopped enjoying writing music, one of the ways of channeling my emotions was essentially closed off – but at that stage, I still had playing music for enjoyment going on.  When that stopped back in 2012, another way of channeling feelings was gone.

Not playing music still feels alien to me – it was a huge part of my life from the age of about 4 until I was around 22. Hell, it WAS my life. I have so many musical instruments around the house, and I barely touch them. I think there are even people in my life who don’t know I can play the violin and piano, can strum a few chords on a guitar or once had dreams of being a film music composer. And yet, because music was part of my life for most of my life, there’s a good handful of people who can’t get their heads around the fact that my work isn’t anything to do with music, or the music industry.

Sometimes I forget about it. Then I remember the joy I used to get out of playing violin in an orchestra, quartet or band and hearing the sounds come together. The thrill and adrenaline rush of hearing something I’d written being performed for the first time.  The excitement as I would hit on the right sounds to fit whatever was happening on screen.

Lately, it’s been bothering me more than ever that I don’t have that outlet anymore, and yet I physically don’t know how to write music anymore. People used to ask me how I did it, and now I really wish I knew the answer. Sometimes it frustrates me to the point that I want to scream, and yet the thought of actually trying to write anything absolutely terrifies me. I sort of touched on it back in 2014 in a post about creativity, and whilst I have found ways to be creative since then, they’ve all been a bit fleeting.

It’s something I know I need to get back to somehow – and I’m taking steps to try and get back to it. I sent out a couple of emails to orchestras to hopefully join, and maybe from there I can eventually get back to writing again. I do hope so. Ironically, I’m now surrounded by friends who are making short films, so I should be in the best position ever to be writing!

This post has mainly been a bit of a feelings dump for me, and maybe a bit of a motivator for myself to try and work this out, but if you’re still reading…here’s a piece of music I really like. I think I associate it with the time of my life when I was enjoying music the most – just before I went off to university. It never fails to make me cry, though.