I Gave Myself A New Year's Resolution To Learn Guitar But It's Been An Epic Fail

So yeah, it’s January and I’m that guy. You know the one, the type who jumps headfirst into a new year’s resolution with stars in their eyes, convinced they’re going to master something completely different from what they’ve done all their life. For me, it was learning how to play guitar. It started out great. January 1st and I got my first lesson from this cool old guy at the music shop who used to be a famous musician in his youth. He said he’d teach me for free if I promised to practice every day. So there I was, strapping on this beautiful acoustic guitar with the intention of playing it nonstop. I even made a chart and everything! You know, marking off each day as I practiced, thinking I would be some sort of rock star before you could say “new year’s resolutions”. The first few days were fun. I’d play for an hour or two, my fingers hurting but feeling accomplished. But then something happened. My motivation waned, and suddenly an hour felt too long. So what did I do? I cheated. Instead of playing the whole time like I promised myself, I started mixing in other stuff - watching videos on guitar tutorials, reading about chords, and pretending that scrolling through YouTube was practicing. It’s not though, is it? Now it’s been a month since New Year’s Day and my chart has more red X’s than green checkmarks. And while I feel embarrassed to admit this little white lie to myself, the funny thing is - there are days when I genuinely miss picking up that guitar and seeing if I could have learned something new. I guess what I’m getting at is, even though lying to myself about practicing didn’t work out great in terms of my resolution, it might actually push me to be more honest with myself next time around. At least I haven’t thrown the guitar out or given up on learning completely yet.