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@jmwood59gmail-com Aloha Jeff – Don’t feel all alone, I, like many newbies, felt overwhelmed early in my TAC journey – there’s LOTS to do and LOTS to learn, … and it keeps coming at you.
But then I realized I’m not here to live up to random challenges, I’m here to have fun playing my guitar. I dialed back my commitment to daily challenges, the paddling of the canoe so to speak, and learned to relax, take my time and float. So I “opened up to sampling what’s offered”, picking things that interested me to explore, and let the learning come at a pace I could deal with.
For me, since I was a fairly respectable self-taught player from the late 60’s, that meant delving into the skills courses for the playing side of things and doing a deep dives into the background of acoustic guitar. For instance, I watched EVERY Acoustic Tuesday episode and can now say, with a sense of confidence, I now know “what I don’t know” … and that makes me hungry to learn more general guitar/ music knowledge.
But I’m also now inspired to have a method to my “training” too. By training, it’s not just the head stuff, but making the transition to mastering the physical part of playing. BUT I STILL select what I work on, because I don’t have time to do it ALL.
So, as one example of “eating the elephant” (and this method works for me because I am retired), each weekday morning I open the Daily Challenge, mark as a favorite, print the tab and take a few minutes to figure the tab out. Then I review the “play” video (see how I did figuring out what was called for) and THEN watch the “learn” video (because they always have hidden gems). Now I’m ready to follow up on that particular challenge anytime I want to. Then I’ll look at the Forum posts, just to stay current … and call my morning done. Almost every day including weekends, in the afternoon I’ll select some tactical exercise for practice and dexterity, and some growth excise, like learning new songs to stay entertained.
Every long-term member at this site will have their own “Unique” story to tell about getting the program to work for them, and they all will stress doing the work (play at your own level — regularly) and ALWAYS have fun. That should be your commitment to yourself. There are tens of thousands of additional members in the TAC family who support that, for themselves and for YOU.