As some of you might have seen on my Instagram, this week I celebrated my two year ukulele-anniversary (or ukeversary). But that’s not entirely true. I bought my first ukulele about 3,5 years ago. It’s the purpleish Tiger soprano ukulele, that I still sometimes feature in my pictures (don’t really play it much these days). I bought it cause I really wanted to learn how to play but for 1,5 years I was too scared to do so.
Being a scaredy cat
I didn’t think that I would be able to learn by myself and I was too scared to take lessons, so for 1,5 years that precious little instrument was just laying around in my bedroom, collecting dust.
However, in those 1,5 years a lot of things changed in my life (this subject probably deserves its own blog entry one day) and in July 2016 I was finally brave enough to sign up for ukulele lessons.
And on September 27th 2016 I took my ukulele and went to my first lesson. I was excited but I also felt completely ridiculous.
- Picture taken right before my first ukulele lesson (for my other Instagram )
Being there and taking my ukulele out of its case I was convinced that the teacher will immediately laugh at me and this will be it. Well, he didn’t (at least not in a way that I noticed) and it was actually a really nice half hour. I learned my first chords C and Am and how to pick the intro to Hallelujah. As you might have seen on my Instagram – I’m still having some trouble with playing and picking the whole song. But that’s really just a lack of practice.
Keeping myself accountable
So, that’s how it all started. In the first year I did make some progress, but didn’t really make time for lots of practice. So my progress soon stalled and it became a bit of a pain. I didn’t want to give up playing though so halfway through my third semester I decided to find something that will make me hold accountable for practicing. Instagram did that trick for my fitness and weight loss journey (again, a subject that deserves its own blog entry one day) so I thought it might help with my ukulele practice as well.
In December 2017 I created @nikky.and.the.ukulele . My goal was to produce nice content to look at (aka lots of original pictures) and content that makes sure that I practice regularly (aka videos of me playing and singing). In the last 10 months since I started my ukulele Instagram account my skills have improved soooo much (tons of video evidence of that), I’m much more confident when it comes to playing and singing and I’ve met so many lovely people. There’s still a lot I have to learn and I can’t wait to do so. Thanks for all your support so far, it means the world to me.
xoxo Nikky