So I started my guitar lessons for the umpteenth time this evening. When I mean started, I mean resumed from a long hiatus of non-practice. It’s happened before. I would have a good practice streak for a couple of weeks and then something would happen and the consistency would halt. Weeks, months would pass. The guitar gathering dust and I staring at it and wishing I had the self discipline to pick it up and just start playing; but at the same time feeling bad for not having the zeal to, and therefore shying away from facing myself by finding something less productive to distract myself with. A vicious circle I tell you!

However, this evening I picked it up! A dear friend of mine got me a “8 Chords 100 Songs for guitar” book for my birthday a couple of days ago. Such a thoughtful gift. It contained familiar songs and hymns. As I browsed through, I got excited at the prospect of learning and being able to play them in private singing sessions between God and I. That’s one of the reasons I had wanted to start playing in the first place.

When the lockdown started in March, I knew that I need to actively do something to maintain some kind of routine especially since I would now be working from home. So I decided to set alarms for my hourly activities daily. For example, 5am wake up, 6am devotion, 7am exercise, 8am get ready for work, 8:30am start work, 1pm lunch time, 5pm finish work, 6pm dinner, 7:30 guitar lesson, 8pm journal/blog post, 9pm evening devotion, 9:40pm bed time. Pretty structured if I do say so myself! I mean look at all that productivity! I did keep to it for a couple of days. But then work would spill over to 6 or 7pm, or I would have trouble sleeping and would wake up feeling tired which would have a knock on effect on the rest of the day. Come 7:30pm, I would snooze or cancel the guitar lesson alarm and it became my new habit of snoozing or cancelling these faithful reminders of the habits I wanted to develop. The irony!

So, I am glad I picked up the guitar today, even as I type these with sore finger tips (a reminder that I haven’t played in a long time). I pray to be more consistent. Speaking of prayer, I realise I need to pray more about the seemingly mundane. I do a lot of thinking and I sometimes mistake that for praying. I want to pray more for God to help me. The reality is that I depend on him for everything. He enables my every breath, and He can give me the strength to be more disciplined. So I pray that tomorrow at 7:30pm when the alarm rings for my guitar lesson, I will pick it up and play.