Not that I haven't tried to start again from time to time. Buying instruction books and trying to read them and understand what they were trying to teach me. It just didn't cut it. Somehow the step from the abstract words and figures on paper to the real world of playing became to big. I just got frustrated and gave it up again.
I guess I the playing have been there always, dormant in the back of my head. Something that I never got around to finish. In the mean time I studied computing and worked as a computer professional. I learned myself to write on the keyboard without looking at the keys. Which means letting your thoughts run out through your fingers and into the computer.
As time went by it dawned on me that if I wanted to really take up the guitar again, and really get somewhere, I would have to get to know the fretboard as well as I know the keypad. Know it so that I can just think or feel a particular note and it will ring almost by itself. That's how I write and that's how I want to play. That's my goal now. Just making myself able to express my own thoughts and feelings via the guitar, by combining sounds into something that will (hopefully ;) ) sound as music of sorts.
It still took a while to get started from that conclusion. I can't afford a private teacher. I have to pay for song lessons for my daughter. Even if I could afford it my life is not such that I can commit myself to follow regular scheduled lessons with a teacher. My work makes me travel a lot.
So I started looking around for some kind of software that may help me learn and rehearse guitar playing at my own pace. Then I discovered DVD lessons and on line lessons and started investigating deeper into those. Finally I found so many recommendations for this site that I decided I'd give it a try.
-And by golly, it works! This is what I have been looking for for 25 years. Someone who can show me how to do things instead of books trying to tell me. And finally I am learning not only to use the fretboard, but also the theory on how and why some things work together and some doesn't, and I love it. There is so much to learn, so much to dig into. There will always be something new to learn. The guitar has become fun again.
Luckily I never had the heart to sell neither the old Takamine acoustic from '82 nor the Tokai "1964" strat. I love those guitars. I love the sound of them, the feel of playing them. The Takamine has the sweetest sound. It got pretty beaten up back in the eighties and I sold it to get a new acoustig without battle scars. Ended up trading the new one for the old one. I haven't found anything that sounds like it so far. The old Tokai is a perfect replica of a vintage Strat, it's become set up correctly for me by a pro luthier and the vintage replica has now become a vintage guitar in it's own right.
They've both been with me all this time, waiting patiently for me to come out and play again. Now their wait is over. It's time to play! :)
regards
-hjv