Happily reunited with my grandfather's violin at the carriage house tonight!
My violins have been out on the island during our move-transitioning. Here I am caught-on-camera playing away a few years ago looking more serious than I ever am...
...since I've always played "just for the fun of it" since I was a young girl...Ahhh, to pleasurably pass the time away with leisurely past times....
Playing around on stringed instruments, both the violin and viola, has been one of my favorite past times since I was in fourth grade. It's been over 30 years now with my screeching-away formally within an orchestra and informally with being a trio consisting of me, my mother and my younger brother and just happily alone in the living rooms out on a mountainside, an island and now here in a small Savannah carriage house.
I've never been too-serious about my violin playing but maybe it's because I'm a Preppy.
Yuppies (Young Urban Professionals) work hard and play hard, BOBO's (Bohemian Bourgeois) work hard and play hard but try not to look like it and Preppies, well us Preppies may or may not work, may or may not work all tooo hard and as for playing...
...well, let's put it this way, if you see what looks to be a dyed-in-the-100%-wool Preppy trying too hard while they're playing...then they're probably a Preppy Poser rather than a real Preppy.
Real Preppies are from WASP-stock or attitude where leisurely pursuits are just that, leisurely.
There's no trying to fit-in, there's no trying to prove anything or become a professional by perfectionist proficiency with Preppies.
If one's naturally talented in something that's one thing altogether but this doggedly striving to perfect one's game so to speak simply isn't within a true Preppy's cultural vernacular.
To some degree this has hindered present day Preppies as to predominating within today's culture of constant pursuit towards innovation, improvising, investing and ipo's n' such but heck, we're really all about generation after generation of "capital-T tradition" over change and the predominance of trust funds do foster a bit of complacency amongst us. Preppy millionaires yes, Preppy billionaires...not so much. Preppies eschew any 5-minutes-of-fame for the most part and think that our generations-old lifestyle becoming part of a purveyed lifestyle trend for the masses truly misses the whole point of what the definition and distillation of all-things-Preppy really is.... quite oxymoronic indeed!
We may have smart phones yes, but we're for the most part driving older cars, wearing even older cardigan sweaters and have no desires to turn our past times into mega-media-merchandising empires. Try as she might, Martha Stewart is not an authentic Preppy...sorry. Alexandria Stoddard is however and though I don't know the background of Charlotte Moss, just the way she cultivates her designs and presents her stylized proferrings as well as her personal self hood strongly suggests a patrician kind of Preppyness. There's an ease to the luxuriously-limited design worlds and lifestyles of Stoddard and Moss that has never been present in all that constitutes Martha Stewart's vastness, bless her ever-striving heart.
Yes, I'd like my decor'-inspirations and decorators to always be Preppies but I'd like my architect, contractors and plumbers to be decidedly non-Prep.
I'd like my florist to be Preppy but my jeweler, hair stylist, auto-mechanic and any surgeon needed in the future to be also decidedly non-Prep. This being said, some surgeons as well as airline pilots, bankers, lawyers, professors etc. are true Preppies who have an innate talent for doing excellent work and truly enjoy having careers however these kind of Preppies are fewer than the majority-Preps out there in the world.
I am in a true minority within my family n' close friends as to being a Preppy female who enjoys managing people, projects and products; whose few years of being a stay-at-home-wife about drove her crazy even with doing a ton of volunteer work and having plenty of writing projects going on until she could segway her "free time" into a graduate degree, wheh. Now that this ole' gal has returned to her business management career, I am so much happier a person and only would add-in working on a doctorate as any further addition into my life. However, the various pastimes I enjoy such as string instrument playing, watercolor painting, needlework, jewelry making, fly fishing and kayaking and skiing and yoga stretching along with gardening, well.........
..........you'll find me relaxing and laughing because leisure is always Preppy-leisurely with me ;)
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