What is Free time?

As I begin to fall into the life sucking pit that is finals, I take with me little progression. By this I mean I STILL have yet to get back to practicing my guitar. I see it now as I type, looking at me, taunting me. I created a plan that I thought would get me to achieving my goal, but instead, only made me stress about learning the darn thing. In hind sight, I should have just made smaller goals that lead up to an overall goal. Such things like learning to play the guitar take time, and I definentely did not have the time. My ultimate goal at this point is to finish learning to play stand by me. However, I still plan on one day achieving my goal of playing Wonder wall by Oasis over the summer.

0 time 0 progress

So as of recently, being my second semester junior year and having a bunch of extracurricular activities, I have had almost 0 free time. If I'm not working on homework, then I am doing a sport. If I am not doing a sport, I am sleeping (at ruffly 2 am if I might add). I don't want this to be viewed as a pity party, so I'll cut to the chase. I have had no time to work on guitar and have almost lost a passion to learn it. This is due to the fact that it seems more of a chore now than something I can kinda just pick up and have fun with.

Its not just a matter of time, its also a matter of energy. By the end of the day I am exhausted and can hardly find the energy to finish my homework. Because of this lack of energy, I have to put off practicing the guitar and end up falling far, far behind schedule. I honestly can't make any commitment to a plan until the work load dies down a little bit.

From this experience, I learned that I need to manage my time better as well as manage my work load. I also learned that I am very slow to recover from setbacks and need to work on that as well. Moving forward, I plan on at the very least, practicing for 5 min a day, regardless of when or where it is.

Make-Up Work

So in the last two weeks, if I’m being honest, I have probably only touched my guitar twice. I have neglected my work schedule in order to make up class work that I had missed. Being that I am a second semester junior, missing 7 consecutive days of school does not bode well. I have had serious drops in my grades, however I think I am beginning to pull them up. I was able to do all this make up work by preventing myself from being distracted with video games, tv, and social media. I went into my dad’s work the past two weekends and brought my school work with me. Working in a cubicle with nothing but the hum of the AC really helps you focus. Not only was I able to get caught up with all of my work, but I was able to do it more efficiently. With the knowledge of how I work best in my hands, it is up to me to follow through and utilize this tool. I do not think I can bring a guitar into my dad’s work, however, I do think that I will go to his work on Saturdays and crank out all of my homework to free up Sunday. With my Sunday free time I should be able to dedicate some serious time to practicing guitar.

So, for the next two weeks I plan on putting myself in a correct work environment where I can crank out all of my homework. This will not only be applicable on the weekends, but the weekdays as well. I plan on isolating myself not in my room, as I associate it with play rather than work, and working in my brothers room (free of electronics) or the dining room table.

Obstacles

1. What have you learned about your topic?
2. What have you learned about yourself?
3. Have you had any setbacks? How do you plan to handle them, or how did you already handle them?
4. What are the next steps in your process?
5. How can you apply anything you have learned to yourself, your school, your community, etc.?

So far I have not learned very much past Stand by Me. I have chosen to stick with this song for a little longer because I grasp the major concepts and can play the cords. However, I still am struggling with the transfer from chord to chord and maintaining the tempo. I also understand the strumming pattern, however I think with a little more attention to my transfers. To overcome these obstacles, I plan on spending at least 15 minutes on each transfer per day. To overcome my struggle with keeping tempo, I will strum to the songs strum pattern (without playing the chords) to different tempo's. 

Unfortunately, I had several other obstacles that hampered my progress over the past 2 weeks. Specifically, I went on a class field trip to LA and have been sick ever since I got back. because of this, I could not practice and unfortunately have lost some of my previous skill. Through this process I have learned that I need to work on time management and plan ahead. If I know I'll be gone for a weekend I should double up on practices the week before. Ultimately, the lessons I've learned through this process in general terms is to plan ahead and for a worst case scenario.

My next step would be to wrap up Stand by Me and move on to Wonder Wall by Oasis. 

Progress

So 20 Time is essentially where a teacher or authoritative figure permits the students to use 20% of instructional time for a recreational activity or one that interests the students extra curricular desires. The essential question that I have asked is, ‘how can playing an instrument affect mental health in stressful situations?’. For my 20 time I have chosen to learn how to play guitar again. I chose to do this not only because I had a genuine interest in learning again, but because I was interested in the effects it would have in my everyday life. This ultimately answers my essential question as I will be blogging about my struggles trying to learn how to play again and will reflect on my progress not only in learning to play songs but to cope with stress as well.

My goals for this project would be to learn how to play at least one song from memory and be able to play others proficiently. My goals would not only be to learn to play the instrument but learn how to cope with stress through playing the instrument. How I will measure this progress or achievement will be relatively simple. To measure my progress in learning to play a song will be how fluently I can play said song. To measure the effects of learning the instrument I will write how I felt after each week and the either alleviating effects it had or if it only added more stress to my life.

So far I have ‘learned’ how to play, “Stand by Me,” by Ben E. King. I am currently working on the fluidity of chord transfers. However, I am able to play the chords and know the strumming pattern. This was a little deviation from my original plan, as I had not planned on learning the song, however, it exposed me to the elements of playing chords at a relatively tangible pase. Moving forward I am going to work towards perfecting Stand by Me and learning how to play Swing Life Away by Rise Against.