Listen to the Music

Alternate title: "Guitar Hero I am Not"

*almost* skipped my lesson this week due to being super duper lame. Thankfully my good friend providing said lessons convinced me that it was precisely what I needed yesterday. "get lost in the music girlfriend!"
Love it.

I feel re-energized in learning and playing after the lesson. For the last week or so, I walked past my guitar repeatedly. We stared each other down like it was the Old West....ugh, you again. No, I don't want to play you. Oh, you don't want me to play you? Well good! Cause I wasn't going to! That list of songs scribbled down that I want to learn? No, I didn't really want to learn those either. Fine...fine!

This later gave way to guilt and stress about going to my lesson. Ultimately, the lessons are for my own good, right. I have someone to teach me and help me and correct me. But it's also accountability. If I haven't played all week, then I have not improved, and am probably worse than the previous week. So it was becoming extra stress the closer I got to the lesson and the less I felt like picking it up. The wave of relief at the response to the question of whether it was worthwhile to go to the lesson was one of the best feelings I've had all week....which later was overshadowed by how good I felt after the actual lesson.

I picked my blue beauty up out of the case for the first time in over a week. It felt nice to hold it, but I was still nervous. But as I placed my left hand and started plucking away with the right, I felt so relaxed and relieved that my fingers remembered what to do. I still remembered how to count and keep rhythm. I can still play....

The technicalities of the lesson are nothing too exciting to write about, but the lesson at the end was priceless. Just play. Play more. Find solace in playing. Have fun. Make music. Find peace.

Listen to the music. All the time.