24/03/2025
It wasn’t always like this.
This smile… 15, 20, 25 years ago? Yeah… no.
This story is about my anterior mid-cingulate cortex and why I stopped playing the piano when I turned 18.
When an activity is externally imposed rather than self-chosen, it can create a long-term internal struggle - especially when it’s something as demanding as classical piano.
That’s why I stopped playing when I turned 18.
I literally stopped. Didn’t touch a single key for almost two years, even though I had a piano in my 37m² apartment, so we met daily.
Sometimes, I’d sit in front of it and apologize, telling him I didn’t hate him - I just needed a minute. Or two years. To recover from everything we’d been through.
I’d sometimes imagine him answering back: “Good luck explaining that to your parents, girl.”
At some point, the accumulated weight of obligation must have triggered a need to reject it in order to rediscover my autonomy. Playing the piano should have been this beautiful thing - not a reason to cry or deal with endless nightmares.
So I had a mission: to eventually return to the piano on my own terms and redefine my relationship with it.
To shift from an external expectation to an internal desire.
📖 Since I’m constantly curious about the brain, I’ll throw an interesting term in here: anterior mid-cingulate cortex (aMCC) - I encourage you to read about it.
The aMCC is heavily involved in effort-based decision-making and persistence, so my daily piano practice - especially when it wasn’t entirely self-driven - did shape quite a few good things in me:
It strengthened my ability to push through discomfort. It shaped my relationship with effort. It made me more disciplined. But it also created an internal conflict between obligation and desire.
It probably affected my emotional regulation, as the aMCC is tied to processing frustration and adaptation.
And it probably influenced my burnout threshold, making me capable of sustained effort but also prone to overworking - because I internalized effort as an expectation rather than a choice.
You win some, you lose some. Be patient with yourself.
🎹🤍
📸 🫶🏻
