The first time I heard La Tarantelle, my honest review was: wow, that's pretty fast.

My second thought was: I could probably do that.

Only one of those thoughts aged well.

Here's the situation. For my ABRSM exam I had to pick one piece from List A, and there were three options. I'd love to tell you I chose Burgmüller after careful study of his place in the Romantic era. I chose him because the piece sounded cool, and out of the three, it looked the least likely to end me.

I learned a fun/not so fun fact about this song though. The tarantella is an Italian folk dance, and the old legend says people danced it wildly to sweat out the venom of a tarantula bite. Pretty cool.

In economics, choosing something is never free. The real cost of any choice is its opportunity cost: the value of the next best thing you gave up to have it.

On paper, my opportunity cost was easy. It was the other two pieces on the list. But that's like saying the cost of a gym membership is the other gym.

The real price is the hour.

I practice about an hour a day. Supposedly. More or less. That's not the focus though. That hour has to come from somewhere, and there are a few candidates. Studying. Friends. Sleep. But, if I'm honest, the strongest competitor of all: lying in bed scrolling TikTok and Instagram until I fall asleep.

Here's the part of opportunity cost people forget. It isn't everything you gave up added together. It's only the next best option. So every evening I sit down at the piano, I'm not just choosing to play this piece. I'm choosing this piece over one very specific, very comfortable alternative.

Some days that's an easy trade.

Some days the doomscroll puts up a serious fight.

I didn't know it yet, but I wasn't really choosing a piece. I was choosing what the next few months of my evenings would cost.

At least the tarantula part was optional.