I'm Bad at Guitar

I’m really bad at guitar. And that’s probably a good thing, because I’d be even more insufferable than I am now if I had any kind of talent for it. The problem is, I want to not be bad at guitar, but every time I practise I am confronted with my own inescapable badness and feel overwhelmed with a desire to do something I am good at instead, like eating or sleeping. Every buzzy, poorly formed chord is a reminder if I want to get to good-enough-to-impress-girls level (if I tried to pretend there was another reason I wanted to learn, you wouldn’t believe me, let’s face it) then it is going to take probably a couple of thousand hours of practice, which is an awfully big investment when I could go and get just a little bit better at chess. Except no girl ever has been impressed by my in-depth knowledge of the Najdorf Variation of the Sicilian Defence, or my well-honed intuition for rook-and-pawn endgames.

On a serious note, I think it’s good for me to practice being bad at something. It gives me permission to not have to be good at everything, all the time.