my dad is a pretty cool guy. i think i got dealt some pretty good cards with him, he influenced my music taste a lot as a kid, we share a lot of interests (as in, i can talk to him about videogames and not get the weird looks that i get from my mom) and his political opinions aren't batshit insane, which is always a nice bonus. ever since i was a wee demon, though, i've always watched him play guitar, and he's pretty damn good at it. he has a setup with foot pedals, an amp, some big chunky 'phones for sound monitoring, the works. it's pretty mesmerising to watch him at work, and i always had a passing interest in potentially picking up guitar because of that. there's just one issue: creatively, i don't have a single musical bone in my body. don't get me wrong, i love music to death, i'm almost always listening to something in my downtime. i'd like to think i'm pretty good at rhythm games, i was able to get all the perfects in Rhythm Tengoku so i think that counts for something. no, it's moreso that i just can't... make music. i've tried many times, i had a DSi game as a kid called Rytmik that was essentially a DAW for your DS, but i pretty much only listened to the premade songs that came with it. i played a ton of WarioWare DIY back then as well, and that had a music creation tool that got a ton of people i know into making music in the first place. but i barely ever touched it, i just made the microgames or drew shitty comics. in middle school i played trombone and played for 2 more years in high school, but the only way i got by in that class was by muscle-memorizing every song so i didn't have to even read the sheet music. in more recent times i've downloaded FL Studio and tried making something in that, and that might have been the closest i ever got, but it just never fully clicked for me.

which is exactly why it caught me so off guard when my dad got me a guitar for Christmas in 2018. not only that, but it was modified for my left-handedness, and even came with an amp. don't get me wrong, i thought this was awesome at the time and i immediately started trying to make something happen with it. but then reality knocked my door down, and i realized i'd just been plucking random strings for three weeks straight. after that, i decided maybe guitar lessons would help, and then wouldn't you know it, only a week in i had a terrible streak of anxiety attacks (unrelated) that made it hard to focus on doing anything but constantly breaking down, so i started to associate playing guitar with those feelings. (shoutouts to my guitar teacher John though, coolest guy i'd ever met at that point in my life. he'd been to an Anthrax concert, elevating his status to godly in my head) so the guitar continued to gather dust in the corner of my room, occasionally being pulled out to play a few notes every so often, then being put right back where it was. to this day it still kind of drives me nuts that i've never picked it back up, i've felt so bad about the cards this guitar was dealt due to unfortunate circumstances and being in the wrong place at the wrong time. not to mention, i accidentally dropped it once, and it broke the little plastic panel that holds in the jack that plugs it into the amp. it still works, but i feel like i'm gonna break it every time i plug it in, which deters me even more. maybe someday, but for now i think it'll be a while before i sink my teeth into learning guitar.