Mel Bay's Flatpicking Guitar Book

So, along side reading and leisure time as a healing precaution, I decided to GREATLY narrow down my extra curricular artistic interests to.... say.... ONE.
This doesn't count film/production work since that is my chosen vocation and job. What I'm talking about is the art I do outside of my normal work. Previously, here was the list of things I was either doing, or working on learning to do:

Painting
Scriptwriting
Digital Design
Web Design
Drawing
Playing the guitar
Sculpting
Spray Art (different from my conventional painting)
and illustration

I finally realized that, in trying to do and/or learn all of these separate things as extra-art hobbies I wasn't getting good at any one thing and, that particular fact was just one of the things stressing me out. I WANT TO DO IT ALL! Yes, but, for the time being I decided I will just focus on ONE so... after a few weeks of hard-pressed decision making I made a significant realization:

My WHOLE life has been influenced by music- specifically songs written with words. Since I was bearly walking my dad had me playing a musical instrument- the violin. That progressed to the trumpet, I snacked on the french horn for a bit, and then moved full-fledge to the guitar. Whenever things got rough in college or I was too "stressed out" and my life wasn't "going as planned" it was obvious right away from a notable lack of music surrounding me- not listening to it and absolutely not playing it. I even made a list when I was a freshman in college of all of the things that make me feel like a whole person- Faith, Sports (snowboarding and lacrosse) and playing the guitar/writing&enjoying music. 3 simple things that I Have to make time for in my life in order to feel like a complete person and I rarely make time for 2 of them. When the heck am I going to learn?

Anyway, point being, I chose the guitar. I CHOSE THE GUITAR. I threw away the list and chose for music, once again, to enter the book of my life as a dominant character. With music comes poetry and songwriting and then, blam, Chelsea is moderately whole again.

For an example of old-chelsea style scope out: my old poetry

I celebrated this decision by going out and buying a flatpicking bluegrass guitar book. Time to learn the basics that I skipped when I started playing in highschool. I'm going to make time every day to get through this book. My goal is to get through it by mid autumn. If I don't reach my goal I'll take a few lessons to boost my learning curve. The prob with my guitar playing is that I never crossed over the plateau of chords to lead and I didn't even know how to START. My songwriting has gotten boring and monogamous and needs to be spiced up. It's time to take the next step. After I learn a little more I hope to start playing with people again. I'm excited.

The book I got is Mel Bay's Complete Flatpicking Guitar Book (snore). Right now I am struggling through learning to "bass walk" and feeling like a total idiot.


I can't believe I never learned this stuff. Practice makes perfect I guess.

We could be closer than you know,
Chelsea