Except there's one slight problem. I seem to have forgotten how to do that. Or at least, I've fallen out of practice with it.
One of the many things on my agenda for the new year is to finally conquer my guitar and I decided to start on New Year's Day. I sat down, plugged it in, loaded up Rocksmith 2014 on my PS3 (Don't laugh, we all gotta learn some way) and got to work.
At the moment, I'm going through the "Lessons" part of the game and am doing the repetitive exercises associated with learning the absolute basics of the instrument. It's not rocket science, but I figure starting there is better than jumping into the songs I don't even know how to play yet. The first exercise was pretty easy and I found myself enjoying the process. The second one, though, involved learning how to make slide notes, and that was much more frustrating.
It was frustrating because one of my biggest problems in playing the guitar is when I go to hit the A string, I actually hit the E string. Or I go to hit the E string and somehow hit the D string for some stupid reason. Now I know why. My brain knows what it wants to do, but because my fingers haven't developed any familiarity with the layout of the strings, confusion is in the cards.
And confusion is antithetical to relaxation.
A couple days later, I was playing one of my favorite driving games, Gran Turismo 6, and decided to do a little go-karting. Now the thing about this game is that the developers try like hell to achieve total "realism," so Mario Kart, this ain't.
I started out thinking, because I've been both driving a real car and playing such games for over a decade, that this would be pretty simple. It kicked my ass, repetitively, and the more I tried, the more upset I got. I now am in need of a new PS3 controller, which also means I have to wait to get back to work on my guitar too.
The noted Conservative columnist and devout baseball purist (two perspectives which are not mutually exclusive, btw) George Will once said that Ty Cobb was an anomaly among great athletes because he played his entire career in a constant state of a white-knuckle grip and clenched teeth, and you can't really do anything that way. In order to operate at peak efficiency and reach its full potential in any endeavor, the body and mind must be allowed to relax and just do what is asked of it.
When I really think about it, I don't think I've ever really been good at downshifting out of the overdrive I prefer to operate in at all times. If I do something, I go full out, balls-to-the-wall, and I expect that I will accomplish the same results at all times. And when I don't, it just amps up the tension I've established within myself, which makes becoming more volatile that much easier.
A big part of that stems from the wicked competitive streak I developed from when I was just eight or nine years-old. The other part is the amount of pressure I place on myself to simply just get it right the first time, whatever it is. If I can't get it right out the chute, then that's it, I'm both a failure and a loser.
And yet, when I'm in my car and trying to get up a hill, the machine can't always do it in fifth gear. It's more efficient to drop down to third or fourth and not overstress the engine.
Time get myself to do the same thing.
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