An Introduction

Welcome to The Uncomfortable Project.  While the summary below the title gives you a pretty good hint of what this blog is going to be about, let me take a second to expand on it.

Back when I first started playing guitar, everything was new and exciting... and scary!  I had no idea what I was doing.  As I tried to form basic chords and simple riffs, my fingers felt like gnarled claws, incapable of any kind of grace or rhythm.  My brain was devoid of musical ideas as I stared at the fretboard much like a writer stares at a blank page, begging words to magically appear.  After getting to the point where I actually felt somewhat competent I was presented with two new challenges: taking over the students of my outgoing guitar teacher, and joining a band - several, actually - with musicians who were far better than myself.  It again forced me to pull myself together and have a lot of fun in the process.

Lately, my musical endeavors have been little more than playing my guitar in the basement.  I find myself falling back to the same riffs and licks.  When I do sit and try to write and/or record a song, I don't really feel true stirrings of creativity, because there's simply no need for me to be.  I'm not a good singer, but it doesn't really matter when there's no audience.  I'm in my comfort zone... and comfortable is boring.

So, it's time for me to get uncomfortable.  I'm going to find other musicians to play with, which should hopefully force me to get my skills together.  I'm going to force myself to sing (well), something I've always been very self-conscious of.  I'm going to force myself to write songs, perform them, and share them with as many people as I can.  And if no one is interested in hearing them, I'm going to keep at it until I'm worth listening to.

This blog is where I'm going to share my experiences and thoughts during the process, which is also outside my comfort zone.  I've never started a blog because I've always hidden behind the excuse that no one would find what I had to say interesting.  If I can't find at least one thing a week to share on this blog that at least one person would find interesting, then perhaps I need to shake things up and get more interesting!

I'm going to leave things here, as this is already turning into a long first post.  In the next week or so, I'll share a bit more about what sort of pressure I'm going to put on myself, what my plan is, and what steps I've taken so far.  In the meantime, feel free to share your thoughts on what you think of this project.