The nut cracked on my Telecaster. Booooooo. Gonna have to take it to the luthier one town over. Meanwhile my son has successfully caught up on his schoolwork and owns that bass! He's learning a few songs a week now. And two of my daughters are getting serious with the guitar! The eldest can play My Favorite Things, and the second can play some riffs. Even my eight-year-old daughter taught herself a bit. So once we get another guitar amp, a bass amp, and Uncle Steven gives my daughter his drum kit, we're a band. All the kids can sing, even the three-year-old. So they all take turns picking songs on road trips and we sing them together. It's a sweet chunk of life.

I haven't practiced diligently in weeks, and it is showing. I need to recommit. 

Tue Jun 01 2021 13:36:20 MST from Wangiss <wangiss@wallofhate.com>

The nut cracked on my Telecaster. Booooooo. Gonna have to take it to the luthier one town over. Meanwhile my son has successfully caught up on his schoolwork and owns that bass! He's learning a few songs a week now. And two of my daughters are getting serious with the guitar! The eldest can play My Favorite Things, and the second can play some riffs. Even my eight-year-old daughter taught herself a bit. So once we get another guitar amp, a bass amp, and Uncle Steven gives my daughter his drum kit, we're a band. All the kids can sing, even the three-year-old. So they all take turns picking songs on road trips and we sing them together. It's a sweet chunk of life.

I still haven't repaired my Telecaster nut, but I just retrung my Taylor for the first time in two years. Instead of medium strings (my go-to) I chose medium-light strings because I really need to get more versatile. Hopefully I'll boost my accuracy. If you're inaccurate with lighter strings, they'll tell you. Also it's supposed to make finger-style playing easier, which I'd like to get better at. So I need to find some good pieces to practice. I'll be restringing my student model guitar as well, with very expensive mediums. Gotta have one guitar I can just hack at.

I love filling my own stocking, lol. 

I'm in a rut. I learned how to play The Kids Aren't Alright by Offspring, and can even sing along to it... 

And since then... stuck. No motivation - no idea where to go next. 

Sun Dec 26 2021 04:30:47 MST from Wangiss <wangiss@wallofhate.com>

I still haven't repaired my Telecaster nut, but I just retrung my Taylor for the first time in two years. Instead of medium strings (my go-to) I chose medium-light strings because I really need to get more versatile. Hopefully I'll boost my accuracy. If you're inaccurate with lighter strings, they'll tell you. Also it's supposed to make finger-style playing easier, which I'd like to get better at. So I need to find some good pieces to practice. I'll be restringing my student model guitar as well, with very expensive mediums. Gotta have one guitar I can just hack at.

I love filling my own stocking, lol. 

I really want to learn Lovefool by the Cardigans. And I might be able to get more practice time as I make more money. Like maybe I can take my guitar in the back of the Explorer when I go show houses. 

I just have other special interests right now - but I have to remember not to let guitar get so far away I have to relearn it all again. 

And yeah, I gotta keep picking songs out that move my progress along. The Kids Aren't Alright was a challenge at first, and it became the song I can play best, the only song I can sing to. That will probably pay off if I keep following it - I'll figure out how to sing to other songs, too, I think. 

Maybe I'm absorbing right now. I do that with art. Big period of learning, then a huge dry space - but really, I'm absorbing what I learned - it seems. 

But that isn't how it went with Spanish. It did, for a while... then I absorbed too long, without new application, and I lost what I had absorbed. 

I did get to the point where I have the foundations. I can still kind of muddle my way through basic Spanish now... and don't think I'll ever lose that. But... I'm not as fluent as I was. 

Sun Jan 16 2022 21:45:40 MST from Wangiss <wangiss@wallofhate.com>

I really want to learn Lovefool by the Cardigans. And I might be able to get more practice time as I make more money. Like maybe I can take my guitar in the back of the Explorer when I go show houses. 

Absorbing is a great word for that. I've had the same experience but I couldn't articulate it with one word. Well done. 

I think it comes from my experience with traditional art mediums... where you don't just LEARN a technique... you fail at it a lot trying to apply it... but at some point... it just *happens*... sometimes, you haven't even formally been taught the technique... that happened to me with learning to flip the canvas around and work at it from different perspectives. I didn't even realize I had started doing it until I turned out a work that was perspective perfect just from my mind's eye... and afterwards, I realized that the breakthrough for me was that I had started turning the paper while I was sketching it... seeing it from the side, the top, the bottom, depending on what part of the composition I was working on. 

I had absorbed my pervious experiences - this is the first example I remember of that happening, and I was about 16 or 17... after having that happen *once* - I was more cognizant of the process taking place as I learned charcoal, acrylic, photoshop and illustrator, and just... everything that is creative expression in my life. 
 
You've got to soak in your education and let it kind of permeate into your consciousness at its own rate. Too slow, it dries out... too fast, and it doesn't stick. 

Fri Jan 28 2022 22:36:47 MST from Wangiss <wangiss@wallofhate.com>

Absorbing is a great word for that. I've had the same experience but I couldn't articulate it with one word. Well done.