When I listen to music lately, I want to play along. My coworker is playing some weird Eastern European folk music with lots of melody and a chorus of singers and I want to strum my guitar along. Any day I don't get to play music is making me upset. I look forward to my lessons with an anticipation that I can't explain.

As I've begun to work on my callouses - to make them permanent this time, instead of the come-and-go callouses I've had up till now - the playing has gotten a bit more painful but it's worth it. Even as I type this, I'm aware of the small bumps on the tips of my left hand and I wish I was home, pressing them against my steel string acoustic.

To be able to hear folk songs, and be able to play them, if not well, then recognizably, within minutes, feels like such a liberation. My muscle memory grows slower than my intellectual memory. I can count out scales and modes in my mind but memorizing them with my fingers takes a bit longer, remembering lines of melody without having to think about it takes a bit longer.

Training your little finger to develop independently from your fourth finger is very difficult, but as I do my exercises, as I stretch and flex and press down with it and feel its growing independence, it feel like an achievement.

In the meantime, the callouses grow. They might tear on the strings, and bleed, but they'll grow back.