You may have noticed I like to yap. A lot. When a topic grabs my interest it's hard to get me to shut up about it. Sometimes my musings—even when they're complete bunkum—might be interesting or useful to someone else thinking some of the same things.
Maybe not.
I'm essentially a rank beginner starting over nearly from scratch, and the things going through my head (and fingers) as I slowly progress in my journey matter to me and I feel like sharing them. Please skip, or hide, or block, or whatever this forum allows to do for this thread if you don't want to see it in your feed.

So, motivation and drive. This morning I spent over 20 minutes in front of a metronome, first just scratching (strumming while deadening the strings with my fretting hand so as to focus purely on right hand work) a 4/4 beat in eighths at 120 beats per minute, then I started adding chord changes on the 1 beat. Only after I was relaxed and hitting the marks did I expand the strums into 16ths, and then started improvising some more complicated rhythms than simple ballad patterns. Next comes chord changes every two beats but I'm not going there until I'm totally comfortable with the first exercise. Probably later this morning.
Not once was I bored, or looking at the clock. I was feeling the groove, looking forward to having it so ingrained I can improvise my right hand without losing the beat, and relishing my progress.
Once upon I time I viewed practicing (anything, really) as tedious. Rush through, jump ahead as quickly as you can to the final part, bang it out, then move on. Right now I have a song burning a hole in my brain that I'm itching to get out there, but I am not going anywhere until the foundation of the song is solid and I can play it relaxed, organically, and not mechanically banging out strum patterns.
Life is good. :side:
Mark