Band Rant

The world knows I'm in band. If I wasn't a Christian and I didn't love the Lord, my reason for life would be band. And I don't think I'm kidding. I mean, outside of friends and family, my life would strictly be band. And drumline is technically part of band at this time. And even 99% of my friends (excluding my awesome church friends and OBers) are somehow associated with band, which is why I know them, so even with my friends, I'm considered at bando. It's a given. I love band. Band is my passion outside of the Lord.
But for something that I love so deeply, it almost always puts me in a bad mood. And I hate that it does that. And it's funny, cuz when I think about it, the reason it puts me in a bad mood, is because band isn't the passion of everyone else who is in band. For some people, it's a social hour, for some it's PE credit, for some it's just something to have a full schedule. And they're the ones who are slackers. They don't try. They get the instructors mad. And they bring down the attitude and performance of the entire band as a whole. I hate that after practice, I can always find something to vent about, because of something that happened during band. I mean, I get mad at myself when I have a bad practice. Tonight I got mad at myself cuz I couldn't play the second half of the pit solo in Copeland. And I should be able to play it, especially since some of my pit can play it. Granted, they stayed inside this morning and worked on it, but as Captain, I should hold myself to a higher standard and should have had it memorized weeks, months ago. But I guarentee you I will have it down by the end of this week, cuz I'm not satisfied with not being able to play the entire show.
Some people don't get that in order to be a good band, you need at least 100% effort from everyone. It's not like a sports team like football or basketball, how if you're having a bad game, you can just sit it out on the bench until you're ready to come in. Everyone in band is always "in". You could actually say that band takes 200% effort, 100% for the visualization aspect of it, and 100% for the musical side, even more would be awesome. If you give 50/50, it's evident in the performance, and if you give 100/100, it has just as big of an impact. So if you have 133 people on the field, at 200% from everyone, that's 26,600% effort out there, and if you have that much effort, it'll make a difference. What Mr Baker said tonight was so true, I would rather have strict, productive rehearsals with amazing competitions and to have the fun in the stands and the bus and the recognition we'll get, than to have a bunch of giggling fun and non productive practices and bad performaces. We'll have more fun if it feels like we have less fun now. And technically, it's, what? 53 minutes out of a day of concentration and hard work (plus 3 mor hours on Mondays), and then 23 hours and 7 minutes of fun that you can have. When we have good practices, we'll have more fun throughout the day knowing we gave it our all. And it's more fun to get the first places when we know we've given it our all, than to get a first place and know we didn't deserve it...

Wow. Go me and a band rant. I love band. And our I love this years band, it just gets frusterating sometimes. We all have our up and down days. Today must've just been an off day.