I started learning piano when I was 15 years old and had lessons for a year and a half. Even though it was a very busy time of my life with a lot of ballet competitions, auditions and language certifications going on (oh yes, there was also school :P, and chorus… and chess…) still I couldn’t stop practicing the piano. After a year and half I moved abroad to study ballet professionally and thus stopped taking piano lessons.
The amazing thing was that our ballet classes had live music played by pianists! Each class had a piano in it and in my free time I kept practicing on my own for about 2 more years. That was 16 years ago!! I recently attempted to study piano again which was significantly more difficult than it used to be… Moreover, some keys of the piano are “sticking” due to humidity and the technician was unable to fix it. For a brief 3 weeks of fighting with the piano keys and my fingers this was the result: