A Journey of A Thousand Miles

 To be honest, I don't know if I'm taking my first step here, or I'm completing my first thousand miles before moving onto the next leg.

My history with guitar is...complicated (which I suspect isn't far off from most people).  I started learning it at what I considered a late age at the time, 18, with aspirations of, well, what?  I certainly had a romanticized notion of becoming a musician, even as I made my way through a mechanical engineering degree.  I never wanted to be a rock god, per se, but had the pipe dream of being a self-sustaining indie artist, which is equally difficult to achieve.

I immediately started taking lessons and spent the next three years absorbing some material, and along the way stumbling into a deep appreciation of jazz, while mostly stressing myself out because I was too overwhelmed by the sheer volume of material I could pick up if only I'd dedicate myself to playing at least four hours every day.  I'd then paralyze myself with the thought that if I can't practice that long every day, why bother practicing at all?  So, some days I'd noodle around for a while, and other days I'd simply skip practice altogether, still under the assumption that one day soon, I'd put it all together and start in earnest.

After college, I shipped my electric guitar back home to my parents and kept my cheap acoustic around for the occasional solitary jam session when my roommates were running errands for the day.  After about a year, I stopped playing altogether.

A few years later, I tried to take it up again, but my girlfriend at the time was furious that "I WAS ALWAYS PLAYING THE SAME SONG OVER AND OVER AGAIN."  Besides, the bulky, black case I lugged my instrument around in scared her poodle, so I felt my endeavors were likely mistuned (figuratively and literally) again.  I was probably 25 at the time, and I stuffed my acoustic in storage for the next 15 years.

I'm not sure what inspired me to try guitar again at age 40.  It wasn't lamentation of my lost youth, where I yearned to go to some middle-aged rock band camp and learn that one Santana song that I could rock out to thinking of my high school girlfriend all over again (also, if that's what motivates you, go for it!  Who am I to say how one should structure their mid-life crisis?).  I think I decided to pick it up again because the guitar, for as frustrating as it can be (and for all the opinions everyone has around what you should do with it, and how good you should be), is a powerful creative tool at any given level of expertise.  Whether or not you're happy playing some beginner exercises over and over again or you're interested in composing your own increasingly complex songs, it has so much potential.  

So, I picked up the guitar and started lessons again and vowed that I wouldn't get sucked into the "you must practice an hour a day in order to take guitar seriously" phenomenon that derailed me before.  For the most part, I've been good.  I certainly practice more consistently and feel like I'm a better, more comfortable guitarist than I ever have been.  But I'd be lying if I said I don't get anxious that everyone seems to learn the instrument faster or better than I do, or that I don't continue to get overwhelmed by the sheer volume of material there is to cover, and that I sometimes feel pulled into eight different directions to learn jazz, rock, fingerpicking, country, blues basics, singing fundamentals, etc., and to learn them at the highest level of virtuosity that's available.

But that's where this blog comes in.  It's foremost my attempt to document my progress and keep me grounded so I can celebrate what I've done and give me some self-imposed structure for my next steps.  Secondarily, if it allows me to teach others that they can enjoy guitar in a way that they can control their own destiny rather than follow a vision imposed by a collective "other," then that's worthwhile too.  Finally, if I'm able to compile what I hope to put here and make a little money on the side, well, I'm not going to complain.