On Failure

February 2, 2025

I was going to write about something else but a post on Idiomdrottning caught my attention. I have no idea what GTD is but I think Sandra is talking about coding. The gist of the post is allowing yourself to accept failure and walk away from a task if it isn't working.

This reminded me of my lifetime (so far) experience of studying and learning music. I used to really psych myself out about playing guitar. A million years ago when I was in high school I was the best guitarist I knew. My recollection is that guitar was very popular at my school and many of my friends and peers played, but I was the only kid who had actual jazz guitar lessons. I understood a decent amount about harmony and chord construction, so I knew a lot of different chord voicings, and I could also read sheet music and was beginning to lift tunes myself as opposed to learning music off of internet tablature.

In any case, going to college was a shock. Suddenly I was one of the worst guitarists I knew. It seemed that everybody was better than me! Looking back I realize that I just lacked actual "on the job" type performance experience. It would have done me a world of good to play rock music in a garage band in addition to my jazz studies. Nonetheless, this was a really demoralizing situation and it kind of hampered my ability to learn music and improve. Things reached a point where I felt that I wasn't getting anywhere with my guitar playing and I considered dropping out of college.

I'm a lot better now. Playing in various cover and original bands in my post- post-secondary school life has had its downsides, but a big upside has been the ability to move beyond this worry about not being a good enough musician. It's also enabled me to conquer stage fright. I no longer worry about achieving some nebulous goal of mastering a musical instrument, but instead maintain a narrower focus of getting through the next gig.

I rarely get frustrated with my playing anymore. The last time anger and frustration got the better of me was probably four or five years ago. I was in my practice space trying to record a cover version of "New Siberia" by Los Straightjackets (from the album Jet Set!) and I just couldn't play it at tempo. Eventually after several failed takes I got so upset I pitched my sticks across the room. But even that was a rare occurrence.

Most often I do what I did on my recent cover gig: The banjo, keyboard, and steel parts weren't coming together in time so I just accepted that it's going to be a longer practicing timeline for me to become proficient and faked the parts on guitar instead.

I have a lot more fun with music these days. I still care about technical facility ("chops") but I don't stress about it. When I hear a great part in a great song, I don't get down about my perceived failings, I get excited to go practice. Blocking off a few hours and practicing music ("woodshedding") has become one my favourite pastimes. Some music takes time, and if I'm not ready to play it today that's okay.

Concluding Thoughts

That's all for today. I've taken some time off to try to understand Atom. Rob from Gemspace has been helping me out over email, so hopefully I'll be able to submit my capsule to the various aggregators soon and maybe a few more people might read this.