Everything Bianca

Some days, I spend the entire session wondering...

How do I know I'm sitting correctly? I don't think I'm holding this pick correctly. Why isn't this sounding right? I'm sure I'm doing this wrong. How am I supposed to know if I'm...

One night, this kind of doubt plagued me the whole time.  I pushed through it. I think about the days when I go through my regime and everything seems fun and I feel ilke I'm making progress and I'm not shouting at my shoulder every 10 seconds to stop tensing up.

When I feel frustrated and doubtful, I slow things down, way down. Extremely. I remembered doing this for strumming. (Is it supposed to sound that awful?) I noticed that my 'up' stroke sounded like I was kicking a harp. (Mild exaggeration.) So I stopped practicing that.
I played each individual string with a down stroke while looking at the pick. Then I played each string bottom to top. I noticed that the pick kept digging into the strings after each up stroke. I continued picking the strings individually. Over and over. Bottom to top. The pick kept slipping deeper. I stayed with it. I played them slow. I was mightily irritated, but resolved to notice my problem.

I did realize that for strumming, using my soft pick sounded horrible. I have a tortoise shell pick that sounds much better. 

I truly do not know if I'm doing anything this right, but I know I'm doing a lot better than I was in January, and I'm not going to let a bad attitude stop me. I'll let it cut my practice down to 20 minutes, but I will still practice.

That, I believe, is the hardest part about teaching yourself anything: The Doubt. When you don't have someone standing over you correcting you, praising you, cheering you, admonishing you. When you become your own teacher, you have to take all of that upon yourself. And do you even know what to praise and what to admonish? 

Another great one, one that allows me to practice every day for the past three months:

Can't I just skip today? Practice tomorrow?
The moment I ask myself that, I go and grab my guitar.

On the bright side, not only have I practiced a proper hour in the past 2 days. I've played for 2-3 hours while practicing some songs I learned.

I can play a 'newbie' fingerstyle version of Brian Boru [video].

I'm working on  Scarborough Fair (a fav!) now, also fingerstyle.

Both at 60 bpm, of course.