I performed two selections in the annual church talent show tonight. The first one was with my beginner bell-ringing group, the “dumbbells”. We played a real oldie, “In The Good Old Summertime”, and we all wore summertime hats. I also got the chance to play a number I’d learned in bell-ringing camp last winter with the more advanced group.

I made mistakes in the rehearsal, and then I made some different mistakes in the performance, but nothing really disastrous, and I’m sure that most people didn’t notice, and the ones that did promptly forgot about it. As our music director told me, the mark of talent is not to do it perfectly so much as to recover from mistakes.

I’m grateful to have had the opportunity this year to discover a new talent of my own, and to watch other people of all ages who were brave enough to stand up tonight and perform and share their various talents. It was fun.

I’m also grateful to DanT1999 here for his tag line about “happily asserting my imperfection”. It popped into my mind as I was driving home and stopped my Inner Critic from being so grumpy. :) 12 months ago