A Woman Without Shame

“How’s guitar going?” some of you have asked. Well, I’ll show you. I sent this to Walter, my teacher, a few days ago and he threatened to post it on his fan page to embarrass me. I knew he was kidding, but it freaked me out for second. But then I thought, shit, I post embarrassing things on this blog all the time, so why not post this, too? After all, I’m all about honesty here. So here I am, about a month in, after three lessons:

A virtuoso I ain’t yet, but I have to say, I’m kind of amazed I can even do this. That said, it was HARD getting to this point. It look many hours to convince my newly calloused fingers to obey; I wish I could have posted the original longer version of this video where I stop, roll my eyes, throw my head back and drop the F bomb a few times before I get this take. Unfortunately I deleted it, but stay tuned because I’m sure there are a bunch more potty-mouth guitar videos coming soon.

This is a typical night for me these days. Get home late from wherever, then spend an hour or so at least on the couch with my guitar and my frustrations. (Yes, that’s THE famous couch!)

So I suck at guitar, but I once sucked at dancing, too — now I suck less. 😉
It’s all a work in progress, right? Just like life. My 38 years has been a series of awkward episodes in which I embarrass myself by attempting/doing something ridiculous, and/or nervously/spontaneously blurting out something that humiliates me or gets me into trouble. Which is why I try to stay quiet most of the time.

Yet something compels me to share many of my awkward moments here. I’m not gonna say it’s because I don’t care what people think of me. Quite the opposite — I probably care too much about what people think of me. I’ve been made red-faced too many times to count and while it never feels good at the moment, I don’t let it get to me too much. Not anymore, anyway. Because everything I do — dance, sing, play, love, etc. — I do with my whole heart. I’ll never be ashamed of that.