So when I was eight years old I got my first guitar as a Christmas present. It was a 3/4 size acoustic and to this day it resides in my parents’ house. The following year I got a cherry red electric guitar because I had insisted that that was actually what I needed.

I even took lessons. First in a group setting and then private lessons. But I never practiced and it never went anywhere.

In school I picked up the flute and played from fifth to eighth grade. First there was my starter flute and then a fancy-shmancy one. I didn’t practice much with the flute either. In high school I had to choose between taking art classes or music classes because I couldn’t do both. And I picked art.

The guitars and flutes languished and when I eventually moved into a house while I was in college, I reacquired all my instruments. By that time my husband had also reacquired some of his instruments, so our house was just full of them!

So considering how my life was already swamped with creative pursuits I decided that I wasn’t interested in music enough to kick myself for not playing any of those instruments. But then Julie and the Phantoms happened and I was inspired!

We originally started watching the show because we wanted to have something on that wasn’t inappropriate for children but we ended up loving it so much that we started watching it without our offspring. The basic premise of the show is this girl who had given up music when her mom died picks it back up again when she sort of starts being haunted by the ghosts of a band from the 90’s. It’s super cute and the music is really catchy! It is an excellent show and I have a lot of feelings about it! And, as I mentioned, it inspired me to pick music back up.

But this time I have something that I didn’t before, namely, Mark. He’s way more of a musician than I am, though he hasn’t played in a while either, but he still remembers lots of things and has some great books. Currently I’m following one of those books front to back to learn guitar. I’m only a few pages in but the well defined structure makes the task of learning how to play guitar way less daunting. And unlike when I was a kid, I’m actually enjoying practicing, even when I mess up. So I guess I’ve finally matured enough to pursue music.

I’m not putting any pressure on myself about it as a very conscious choice and I think that helps. I play because I enjoy it. Mark has also been inspired to pick up his instruments, so there’s been a lot of music playing in this house for the past few weeks! Among our giant collection is a ukulele, which I’ve been enjoying messing around with too. We’ve got a bunch of other instruments as well but I’ll cover those later I think.

On an unrelated note, I haven’t posted in a while for the usual reasons, life was busy, I was doing something else, etc, etc. I was also working on a novel that Mark and I had planned out for NaNoWriMo, but within a week it was obvious that I was not going to be able to finish it. I was only able to hit the daily word count one day so it all just kind of fell apart from there. It’s a real shame since this time I had way more of a plan than normal which made writing easier. But I have a kid now so my time is considerably more constricted than ever before. The goal I set for myself instead is to write 500 words a day. That’s something that I can accomplish in about 30 minutes, which seems like a reasonable time commitment that allows me to do other stuff too. I haven’t really started this 500 word a day commitment just yet, but I’m really hoping to. Lately I’ve been really struggling with going to bed early so that I can get up early to get all my non-work stuff done before my kid wakes up. Considering that it is now past midnight I don’t imagine I’ll get to it today either.

I’ve kind of let the blog fall by the wayside, and the commitment of it was probably one subconscious reason I’ve been avoiding it. But the whole point of this thing was just to keep track of all the cool creative stuff I’ve been doing. It’s supposed to be low pressure (and low effort haha) so I’ve recommitted. (so much “commitment” in these past few paragraphs!)

V