She let that sit for about a minute.

Then she said: “So the first thing you do that’s actually yours is going to feel completely pointless.

That’s how you’ll know.”

The first thing I did was buy a piano.

I cannot play.

I had lessons between eight and eleven and gave up.

I bought an upright from a woman in Clairemont for nine hundred dollars and paid four men to get it up a staircase, and I have had lessons every Thursday for three and a half years with a retired music teacher named Hal who is completely indifferent to who I am.

I am mediocre and getting slightly better.