Last Saturday night I enjoyed a whole hour with my Strat. That might sound strange to those of you that can pick up your axe and play at will. Since I bought my 2008 American Standard (which is slowly morphing into Gilmours Black Strat) I think I have had a total of about 6 playing hours over a period of a year. Not long after I bought it, my wife's aunt died and left me as administrator of her will and estate. Add in buying a new house, moving out and trying to fix up both houses AND hold down a 10 hour per day job, you can see how free time is very precious. What time I have had has been spent as I said above into making a Gilmour strat. So it's been more working-on-it-time than playing-on-it-time. To add more self abuse, I have had a new Fender Super Champ XD sitting alongside the Strat just waiting to be fired up. Oh the humanity!

Saturday night I just called time out and declared it ME time. Many thanks by the way top the forum members whose suggestions helped to clear up my intonation problems. Well, I sat my butt down, plugged in Wizard (my Strat) and just started playing whatever came into my head. It wasn't very long before I entered that elusive place where we all long to live; The Zone. I haven't visited there for many, many years. Long forgotten songs just popped into my head and were instantly transmitted to my fret hand. Couple that with the fact that the SCXD, being a genuine tube amp, was singing so sweetly I just didn't want the time to end. Alas, it had to of course. After not having played for so many months, the lack of finger conditioning started to show. But for that very special hour, I was there and as happy as a man could be.

_________________
September 18th, 1970
There were none better before him.
There have been none better since.

That's an awesome story. I get to play every day and I love it.

Sounds like you had an awesome time, Long overdue I might add. Congrats and try to make more me time for you and your guitar.

Awwwh, that's just awesome.
That's when the passion for music is at it's peak--when you've been without it for a long period of time and you get that sweet hour or two when you can sit down and JUST PLAY.

God, I love that.

I haven't had a day that I haven't played for a good couple of months now.
Actually.
In the year and a half that I've been playing, I think I've only had two or three days when I haven't set a finger on my guitar.
Those days sucked so badly.
I beat myself up the next day because I hadn't practiced because I "didn't feel like it".

Anyway....

_________________
"If it's planned, it's boring." - Freddie Mercury

That's great. You have to reserve a minimum amount of "ME time" to keep yourself sane. Some of my best playing comes when I get up in the middle of an insomnia night and go downstairs to pick up my guitar and play at barely audible volume. Somehow the guitar always manages to sound best then. I once read that Wes Montgomery developed his thumb playing style when he had to go up into his attic at night and play softly to avoid waking his family. Whatever works man!

Tres beaucoup cool. Dig in and play that electric guitar.

A while ago, for years, while in grad school and working 60 hour weeks and with 3 pre-teen kids....

...one thing which was clung to as a shred of sanity was playing guitar 5 MINUTES per day. Scheduled. not up for negotiation.

Now, the girls are out, one of their rooms is this picker's music room, and there is almost an hour a day to play, most days.

Dig it and be grateful in your prayers for the playing time.

Thats great and it is amazing when you go in the zone how songs you have not played in ages just come back to you. I can remember playing 7 or 8 hours a day and time just flew by . It would feel like I just sat down so I hope your hour did not feel like 10 minuetes which it probably did.