Having a hobby is very important. My brother and I have had hobbies since we were little, and it all started when I was two. I played violin then, but now I play viola. My brother and I were living in Hong Kong at the time. Since we were only two when we started, we had to use foam violins that made no sound. The only thing it helped me with was knowing where to place my fingers. When I turned three, they let me start with a real violin. It was one-sixteenth of a normal violin; it was tiny. But, it was the right size for me. When I was four years old, I moved back to New York and started with a new teacher. The new teacher was pretty bad so I got a better teacher. Besides being better, that teacher was very strict. 

This teacher had a reason for being strict: the viola and the violin are very hard instruments. One of them even caused my brother to quit. We went on for a few years and the teacher got very mad because Christoffer fell asleep in class while standing. So, after that, my brother decided, at age six, to quit violin. He quit because it wasn’t easy for him to play and he was also figuring out that this wasn’t his instrument. That’s the thing about hobbies: they have to be something you enjoy. At the beginning you might like this instrument, but when you grow older, you might like something else. 

So, he then started cello while I continued violin. When I turned eight, my parents started trying to change my teacher again. It turned out that she was a little bit too strict after all. A year later, I switched to my third teacher and she was nice. With her, there was less yelling and more smiling. We soon figured out that she taught viola, so I tried it for a couple of weeks, and I now play viola. Since I have been playing this instrument for a long time, I use muscle memory to play because this instrument is an instrument where I can’t always tell myself how to play it. I use muscle memory because the violin is very hard, but my fingers fly over the strings and the music they make sounds good.

All in all, people should have one thing that makes them enjoy life. I like my hobbies because they are challenging and unique. People should have challenging hobbies because they will need to learn how to fix challenges and that could prepare them for a job. It should be unique because it will make them proud of what they do. I always have a song that is very hard for this exact reason. One example is when I was six and I was learning the song Perpetual Motion. This song was super hard because in a second you need to play four notes, and I couldn’t do that quickly. For the first week, I could not even master the first line because it was just so different from all the other songs; they were slow yet this one was fast. I kept trying and trying, but I just could not do it. Then, on the first day of the new year, I started to play it perfectly, and ever since then I have been playing viola and violin better than before. I hope that you have a fun hobby too, one that makes you feel like your fingers are flying.