Quitting My Job And Dedicating 8 Hours A Day For Practicing Guitar Options

[rhoads]

Hi everybody,

This will be a long post so I put the idea in the title to get your attention because I really need your opinions and advice on this.

On short: I want to save some money, give up my daily job and practice about 7-8 hours a day for one year.

To me it's clear now, playing guitar is what I like to do the most and I never stopped dreaming that one day this is what I will do this for a living also. I know it is possible (even here in Eastern Europe) because I have lots of examples and I am willing to pay the price to get there, but for this, there is one essential condition: to be VERY GOOD at it. You don't need to be a guitar god but to be VERY GOOD at it. And here is the problem. I discovered this instrument (and all the related stuff) at 22 years old. Now I am 26.

It's been almost 3 years now since I have taken practice seriously which means that I invested 90% of my free time to this. I tried to get to a an average of 4 hours a day for practice but, unfortunately these are after about 6-8 hours of programming which is what I do for a living for 6 years now. All this is starting to be really toxic because a have very little time to spend with my family and fiends, read a book, watch a movie and the list can go on and beside this, I kinda feel that most of the time was just wasted because you cannot really assimilate much after working a day in front of a computer. As a result: my skills are still pretty low. (you can check out my REC takes if you like: https://www.guitarmasterclass.net/guitar_fo...p?showuser=8284 or https://www.youtube.com/alexandrugeorgescu)

So, my plan is to save some money until around March next year that should last me for about 6 months, quit my job and start practicing 7-8 hours a day after a efficient agenda which I am sure I can find on GMC. Of course, to take some private lessons from a teacher in my town and there are some local bands which I can jam with. (I don't plan to practice alone for the whole time). So this will be the main activity of the day, just as I would have gone to a music school , and this way I will progress a lot better.

I know I said 1 year in the beginning but the 6 six months will be a milestone because my fear is that I still don't know if I have real talent at this. All I know I that I like it more than anything else and I want to do this for the rest of my life. I keep blaming it on the lack of time and on tiredness but I don't want to lie to myself and figure out some stuff about me. (I am not in high school anymore, not even college so I it is about time . Anyway, if after 6 month of practicing like this I still feel that I am not too far from the level I am now, then.. maybe this isn't my thing after all, or maybe 22 years old it is just to late to start playing guitar. But if is the other way around then I will do anything I can to get another 4-6 month of practice like this. And maybe after one year I will have the necessary skills to join a let's say.. semi-professional band an develop from there on. And on. And oooooon, it's Heaven and Heeeell \m/ !!!. Ok, got a little carried away here .

Anyway, rock and blues are the styles that I want to study. Would like jazz also but I haven't tried it before and I know that one year is not enough for this. I will approach it however.

So, please tell me, am I crazy ? is this a good idea ? do you think that one year is enough to get to a decent level ? (please check my REC takes also before answering to this one so you can have an idea of where I am now).

I know there are still lots to talk about, planing, etc but his was just the spark so.. please enlighten me

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[maharzan]

On the contrary, Daniel, that is a classic way of thinking which isn't bad at all and may be valid for 99% of the people. I would think if you are so good at anything, you can create opportunities for yourself, the paths opens up itself. I saw somewhere when Satriani was out there roaming with his instrumental rock album, nobody was really into it. But then he changed the way people took music. Its just not words. This is what is important. But if you don't have the confidence then you can go with the crowd, see the scope and then follow the path which is probably the safest path. I am not advocating this is true or this works for all. For example, I never went into guitars at first place (well I thought I could never progress or play like I can now back then). But from my life, I have a really good example which I can share although there are a lot of success stories out there on how people sacrificed and starved for years before they reached the success level!

There was a computer boom back in late 90s when I was about to join college. I wanted to study architecture (as I liked art/design) but then I failed the exam because of other subjects like chemistry/physics which I still don't understand why they are needed. Then next year, I joined computer science instead thinking working on computers and programming was growing. Thankfully after much study, I passed that year.. LoL.

As soon as I joined college, I hated it and didn't know why I joined at first place. We still had to study chemistry, physics and all those irrelevant subjects instead of just computers. We only had 1 computer subject in 2 years.. F*%#!

So, after like 2-3 months in college, I virtually gave up studies and went to library to study some web designing. We hardly had internet back then but still whenever possible I went and downloaded photoshop tutorials and saved in a floppy disk to take home and study. This was totally out of what coursework was. As a result I failed 4 times in 8 of the final exams. My focus was elsewhere and I didn't know what I will be doing since I won't have a degree and I won't be able to work on a prestigious institution for sure. But designing was what I liked. I still remember a teacher asking me why I was there when I wasn't being able to answer the 'course questions'. I remember saying - ' because my dad sent me.' It was an awkward situation. Everyone laughed of course.

Anyway, luckily I graduated. But before I graduated, I did start working on few projects here and there. A senior friend of mine was looking to work on design projects and as soon as he knew about my skills, he started a design company and I started working with him. I didn't care about what I would do or where I would be in next 5 years. I just kept working and working 24/7/365 days because that was what I enjoyed. It was fun. Of course, I starved. In fact, I moved from a 2 month high paying intern job to a low paying more enjoyable job. haha! I was crazy. But even at this level, I did save little by little for 6 months to buy my first guitar (Music was always what I did when I had some free time). Anyway, then started blooming the 'outsourcing' thing. It was a blessing but hard as well since trust was really hard to build. We won many projects only because of our work rather than 'low price' that usually dominates the outsourcing world. I worked full time / overtime (usually stayed in office 90% of 24/7/365) for 6 years. Of course we had plans and we imagined to really become a huge company. We started 2 and we reached upto 40 people at one time.

Finally, since I loved to work rather than become the boss to manage senseless people (again the thing I don't like) I had to depart from the company to seek peace rather than trying to fix everyones problems. But the best thing was I gathered so much experience all these years that I can now work less and earn more. I have known what works on the market and what doesn't. I can really create my own opportunities! I have learnt what college courses or any degree could never offer.

So, in summary, despite knowing what will work or what the market was into, I just wanted to work on what I liked the most and what made learning mysterious and fun. Staying in lectures were really boring and many time sleepy! I don't claim to have been successful yet but I am pretty happy with where I am right now rather than where I could have been if I followed the path others took, take degrees, go abroad and work like a horse and trying to save my job because of some depression. I now stay at home not worrying about office time and still manage to earn so I can focus on my next most liked hobby, i.e music! I am actually encouraged with my own experience to now focus on learning guitar and was the primary reason I wanted to improve my playing since last 1.5 years.

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This post has been edited by maharzan: Nov 23 2010, 05:20 AM