In mid-January, I started taking electric guitar lessons. Why? I still don’t know truthfully. If I’m being honest, I think it was some level of “I think it would be cool to cosplay a rock star and play these songs I like” and “is guitar hard anyway?”. So I hinted-not-hinted at my girlfriend to get me one and she came through. I then got Zoom lessons from a guy named Denys and I’ve been doing it for about three months now.

The first thing I’ve realized when it comes to music is that you really cannot cheat the process. It makes you practice properly and correctly. You have to bring intensity to each practice and get out of your comfort zone each time. You can’t just cram everything in one night because your hands need time to get comfotable with new movements. You have to learn to listen to your body and know when to take breaks, but also know when your mind is cheating you and you should really continue pushing. 60 minutes of practice really is better than 30 minutes. And come classtime each week, you can definitely really tell who is putting the hour in and who isn’t (full disclosure my lessons are private but I can definitely tell what an hour looks like and what half an hour does).

It’s also insane what the ramifications are for the rest of my life. Because truthfully everything is like music in a sense, except in music the feedback is super clear and in life it isn’t. If you spend an hour a day with maximal intensity grinding anything you will probably get a lot better at it. The reason I don’t do this for everything is probably because of energy requirements, or maybe the feedback loop is not as clear, or maybe I just don’t care enough to put the effort in. It’s also not the same for everything per se - playing music can be energizing, but doing some difficult learning can be draining. That being said, seeing my music progress fairly quickly with this intensity has thrown everything else in my life - which goes through fits and slow periods and growth periods in a more turbulent cycle - into a new light. In a revealed preferences way, I guess I want to get better at my guitar more than I want to get better at other hobbies/skills/etc in my life.