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Hi @ccarnevale , Thanks for the question… “do you have any tips on how to get back into the swing of things and, most importantly, how not to hide behind the blues shuffle (I find the TAC daily practices super intimidating and waaaay too fast for me so I get discouraged)”….The responses are all right on. In your profile there is a way to explain more about where your are in your guitar journey and allows the community to understand how to help you better. Look at Michelle-PSL’s profile and you will see a great example. Goals have been mentioned and are an amazing tool for engagement/re-engagement and putting them in writing and posting them in your profile only helps solidify intention thereby bolstering determination. I am also one of those people who plays for myself, as in, NOT a performer, but as my guitar music sonic vocabulary increases I realize I do have something to say. Having a musical conversation (no words just music) with another person or people has become high on my list of goals. I did not know this at the start. I have come to know, this is my biggest motivation for playing. What do you want to play? Put that out there, draw a line in the sand and start moving toward that direction. Clarify your vision if you can. I have relied on the community to help me find the path toward my goal when I couldn’t see it clearly myself. I had to let them know what it was which included me figuring it out too. The daily lessons were the key for me. I encourage you wholeheartedly to pursue them. They can be slowed down to make them easier to get under your fingers. Additionally you can utilize a small portion of them and still benefit, gain in skill, moving you toward your goal. For example take todays scale lesson: work the first two shapes only, back and forth. Play combinations of 1/4 notes and 1/8 notes using only those two shapes, do that for 10 min. If you find the success in just that, you will be winning. This will propel you toward the next bite, the next two shapes (strangely a mirror image of the first two) and so on and so on. You don’t have to comprehend the whole lesson in total but you can end on a high note by knowing a piece of the puzzle. As you get back into the swing of things shorter duration for playing time but with greater frequency may yield faster progress for you. Keep the mindset goal oriented and solution based. We can redirect “intimidation” into “welcome challenge”. Set your mind free and your fingers will follow. Remember the only thing that does not work is setting the guitar down and leaving it. From one guitar geek to another, Go Play and have fun. Feel the strings under your fingers and revel in the sounds of the vibrations. Again thanks for the question, keeps me engaged in my own process.
