The guitar in the closet

There's a particular kind of person I love working with.

They've done everything right. Built a career over 35 years that most people would envy. Retired with financial security, the freedom to travel, maybe a sports car in the driveway and a pilot's license to boot.

By every conventional measure, they've won.

And yet there's still one thing sitting in the closet... or the corner of the spare bedroom... or under the bed.

A guitar.

They bought her two decades ago with the personal promise of "someday."

That was one of my student's situation when he first reached out to me. Sixty some years old, freshly retired, and carrying around something that felt less like a hobby and more like a broken promise. 

He'd tried lessons once, years back. Lasted about a month before he quit — not because he lacked the drive or the skill, but because the lessons felt completely disconnected from why he wanted to play in the first place. Random licks and aimless scales -  designed for a teenager with infinite amounts of time and not much else to do.

He told me he was embarrassed to be picking it up at his age. That he'd probably missed his window. That maybe some people just aren't wired for music.

I hear some version of this almost every week.

So here's what we did. No scales. No warm-up drills. No easing him in with single notes and beginner exercises. We started with full chords on day one and a real song by the end of the first week. Not a simplified version. Not a beginner arrangement. A song he actually wanted to play.

The reason most people quit guitar has nothing to do with talent or age. It has everything to do with method. There's a technique that professional guitarists rely on — something so simple that every pro knows it — and yet it's almost never taught in traditional lessons. Once you understand it, the instrument starts making sense in a way it never did before. Chords that felt awkward suddenly feel natural. Songs that seemed out of reach become genuinely playable.

By day seven, he played his first complete song.

By the end of ninety days — practicing just fifteen minutes a day and never more — he had sixty songs under his fingers.

I think about him whenever someone tells me they're too old to start, or too busy, or that they've already tried and it didn't work. Because what he proved wasn't just that he could learn guitar. He proved that the window doesn't close. It just requires the right approach.

The guitar was never the problem. It was waiting patiently in that closet for twenty years. All it needed was a method that actually matched the person picking it up.

If you've got a someday instrument of your own — and I suspect some of you do — I'd love to hear about it. Hit reply and tell me what's been sitting there waiting for you.

Someday has a funny way of becoming now when you finally decide it's time.

- JB (the "someday" coach)