The Decision

I didn't expect today to be any different than any other Friday.  Sure, it is my mom's birthday, but there isn't anything else special about today.

I woke up, drove to work, checked my bank account to make sure my payday check had been deposited, and pointed my browser over to dubiousquality.blogspot.com to check out the weekly Friday Links post like I do every Friday morning. 

The first link was about a 30 year old guy who quit his job to spend 10,000 hours training to be a professional golfer.  "Awesome" is about the only word I could come up with after reading the article and then checking out his blog at The Dan Plan .

I started thinking about my own life and how I spend my time.  I have a good job as a software developer, I have a wife, a 9 month old son, and another baby on the way.  A normal day in my life involves getting up early, working from 7:30AM to 4:00PM, and then spending the evening with my family.  All of my extra time is spent on video games.

I love video games.  No, let me state that differently.  I really love video games.

Video games easily take up 20 to 30 hours of every week.  They used to take up 40+ hours before I was married.  I keep track of the time I spend playing games and I have a list of all the games I have ever finished.  My favorite games are competitive online games, and over the years I've come to realize that these games are filling a longing in my life for something else.

I long to compete, perform, and to be noticed for my accomplishments.  There's not a whole lot of those things in my day to day life right now.  I am a code monkey, a husband, and a father. 

Today, I have decided to change how I spend my free time.  I won't be cutting out my gaming time completely, but I am going to start using at least half of that time to learn how to play the guitar.

I won't be starting completely from scratch.  Five years ago I picked up an accoustic and electric guitar and spent a year messing around on both of them.  I never had a formal lesson, but I learned some chords and could play some basic songs.  I stopped playing around on the guitar when I started dating my wife four years ago and I haven't picked one up since.

This time is going to be different, though.  I am going to start with Justin Guitar and look into getting local lessons.  I'm also going to merge my world of video games and guitar playing by picking up Rock Band 3, a Midi PRO-Adapter, and the Fender Squier. 

My goal isn't to mess around on the guitar this time.  I am going to learn to play guitar, and play guitar well.