Reached 500 hour milestone! 5% mastery!

Today started out very good, I just found $2.25 in my purse in quarters so I can get my laundry done.

500 Hour Practice Trophy

Purchased from Boogie Man Music Store

Yesterday I spent a little of my money on something fun. I recently reached my first 500 hour practice milestone. I can't say I've absolutely had my first "click" yet, but I can certainly say it's become much easier to play in front of people and play without tabs. Like I can turn on a track and play it with decent accuracy without an immense amount of warmup anymore. I'm still doing about 20 minutes a day of warmup on average. This week I've made it a point to practice at least an hour.

My time balance for this week has been near perfect, I've been following the weekly schedule that I set up and I've gotten a solid five hours of midterm study done for my legal class. Today I plan to do a couple more if I can, the midterm itself is happening tomorrow. I'm also going to get my chapter 9/10 quiz done. My legal class has honestly become my favorite class; simply because it's the most interesting to me of the three.. But more than anything because of it's consistent. Even if I originally thought Metiner was slow we've actually been perfectly on schedule this entire quarter. He keeps the class very interesting, I like his lectures. And I've learned a ton about the legal system!

I got my strings reset on my guitar yesterday. My friend Adam came over, we hung out for a bit and we ran my Ibanez over to Boogie man where he we got the Floyd Rose fixed and restrung in no time. The shop owner actually told me that he wasn't charging me for it. I was so flattered that I literally said, "Well now I want to buy something!"  hahaha. I didn't actually have the intention of buying something besides the new string but then I'd realized I still had a bit of money from that $160 I'd gotten for my birthday. I spent about $50 of it on groceries the other day.

I had a hard time picking out a strap. I typically have a hard time making decisions in general but there were hundreds of straps there and I wanted to get the perfect one. There were some leather straps that I thought were cool, they're a bit more comfortable then the current material I purchased but I was really turned on by the design of this one and thought I'd look perfect on my Ibanez. Adam agreed so we purchased it.

Originally I thought I shouldn't have spent that money so quickly but then I realized this morning that I hadn't really awarded myself for reaching 500 hours. I think that is how I'll determine when I'll purchase music equipment so that it doesn't get out of hand...

Because seriously you guys, music equipment is the most expensive shit ever. This is an expensive hobby if you let it become more of a... "consumer" project than a creative one. I mean I see people that spend thousands of dollars on their guitar equipment before they even really learn to play. And you can see why, guitar equipment is cool. It can feel exhilarating just holding a fancy guitar but if you can't play anything, well...

So I let myself buy things periodically. For instance, I think I was at about 250 hours when I purchased the Ibanez RGT 42 itself. I've been using Sheridan M.'s old bass strap that she used when she played in band back in middle school. I always admired Sheridan for being the only female bass player, she inspired me and that was a really good strap. So for the last 500 hours I used that one, and today I'm going to try and figure out how to unlock the strap locks and retire it for this new one. I think I'll try to buy myself something cool at every 250 hour milestone.

Of course when I reach the 1000 hour milestone I'm going to get myself a new guitar! At every 1,000 hour milestone I'm going to get a new guitar... That way when I'm finally a master I'll have 10 guitars, that's practically a collection. But I would earn all of them, so instead of being a consumerist thing it's more of a trophy for the amount of work I'd done for each.

Today I've got quite a bit of work to do. Let's see...

-Laundry

-Read Accounting Chapter 13

-Accounting Chapter 13 homework.

-Legal midterm study one hour...

-Quiz Chapter 9/10 for legal

-Finish Hw 8 in math if at all possible... (I don't really understand the material yet)

-Install strap....

Wish me luck. Still feeling a little pain in my chest when I breath but I talked to Katelynn about it and she said she thinks it might be my reaction to an immense amount of stress lately. She said she sometimes has that too where it almost feels like your heart hurts and you feel like you can't breath.. It's all due to the amount of stress I've been putting myself though and probably my high amounts of caffeine consumption. I don't believe I'm significantly worse than most people but I'm thinking this chest pain is somewhat due to that. 

I sent Jed a couple pictures I'd taken around yesterday. We hadn't talked for 2 days so I figured it'd be fine. He hasn't texted back, it's been three days since we've talked. I'm having a feeling he probably partied last night, whatever that's his business. 

peace.