Studying the Guitar

I’m hoping to begin guitar lessons next month. It’s really prohibitively expensive, but (potentially) priceless. And I’d do it on a month-to-month basis, so if I don’t like it or start living on couscous, I can bail. It’s just these four nice guitars I have staring at me, and twenty years of music I’ve bought – and sometimes learned – with the idea that sooner or later, I’d have time for it. When I was programming, I didn’t have time for it. Sometimes I went in at 6:00 AM and left at 11:00 PM. Once, I even got called at home at 11:30 PM after working until 11:00. The message was waiting for me when I got home. Grad school and teaching didn’t leave me with loads of free time, either. Now I have loads of free time and am overwhelmed by all my choices. I don’t expect much sympathy here. But I think I need guidance to move from classical to folk guitar.

Of course, my mother said that I was just always starting new things and never finishing them. I beg to differ (yes, we’ve been down this road before) – who comes up with the finish lines? I can read English better because of having studied French, Spanish and Italian, however sporadically. The cognates help with the words I’ve never seen before (mostly these came up in a few of the “Play for Rice” questions). That’s not nothing. All learning is good, if sometimes painful. I may never be able to speak these languages – and that’s never been my goal: I want to be able to read them and maybe understand them. My mother knows nothing about living in the moment. Funny, I talk to a former teacher who’s now a friend, and she always encourages my ventures. There’s never any of this “What happened to your conversion to Judaism?” or whatever. I learned something going to Temple. I learned a lot trying to piece things together. I could whine on, but I just want to say in really big font:

I DON’T HAVE TO BECOME AN EXPERT AT SOMETHING FOR STUDYING IT TO BE WORTHWHILE!

Is this a mother thing, or did I just get lucky? If she had her way in this wicked world, I’d do one thing for my entire life. Rant over. For now.