It’s a rare day when I don’t spend at least 30 minutes with one of my guitars: whether it’s strapping on my electric or cradling my acoustic. Often, I’ll spend time with both. This has yielded improvement I never expected. Still, I have a way to go to play as well as I’d like to.

The internet is chock full of videos on all aspects of guitaring. But like all things interwebs, this plethora of information doesn’t always guarantee that you’ll learn things in a systematic manner. Also, you can spend more time searching for or simply watching videos rather time in the “wood shed” actually practicing your chops.

There’s a local musician I’ve been following. He’s had some measure of success and a few Saturdays ago, he was playing at a local watering hole. I decided to drive down to the beach and catch a set of his. I also had an ulterior motive—I was going to ask if he’d be game for giving me lessons.

We talked and he said to reach out to him via Facebook. I waited a week and sent him a note.

I’m an impatient person. When I didn’t hear back, I began looking for another teacher.

The problem once again with the internet is that it’s great for revealing information—it really sucks in terms of accessing what that information means.

On Monday I put Danny in the back seat in the midst of a snow squall and drove to South Portland. I pulled up outside a nondescript real estate office. I had no idea what door I was supposed to enter for my lesson. I texted the teacher: he came downstairs. We had our lesson.

He wasn’t prepared for the lesson. I drove back home. I felt shitty. Not everyone who plays guitar should be a teacher.

I’d just spent an hour and $50 to be made to feel once again that trying to play guitar was a mistake. If you had any sense about how that Danelectro housed in a hardshell case lying on my back seat was the one tenuous hold I had on staying in the world, then you would have a much better sense at how wrecked I felt driving back to Biddo.

I never told Mary how crappy my lesson was.

That night, I went into the basement and plugged Danny (that’s the name I’ve given to my electric) into my Vox (I’ve dubbed him, “Voxie”) and recommitted myself to playing better barre chords. That was one takeaway from my guitar lesson from hell—my barre chording sucks.

The internet is a crap shoot. But, it’s where I found Marty Schwartz. Marty is an online guitar guru who I imagine would be a true joy to take lessons from in the real world. But he lives in San Diego and I live in Maine. Marty has a video where he and another guitarist, Griff Hamlin, dispense the kind of constructive instruction I’m seeking on how to get better at barre chording and riffing in general.

I’ve been following Marty’s (and Griff’s) prescriptions all week. Monday night, I felt like giving up the guitar. A few days of working at getting better (and pushing through soreness in my left hand), I’ve figured out what my problem was with getting all my strings to ring out when forming barre chords.

I also got a note back from my local working musician. He’s off to Florida for a bunch of gigs with his cover band. When he gets back in early December, we’ll be meeting-up for my inaugural lesson. I’m guessing that things will go better with him.

My wife thinks I have a man crush on him. That made me think of this crazy episode from Seinfeld with George and his male-crush on a guy named Tony.