All day long, our fingers are double tapping on Instagram, swiping through tweets, or punching random questions into google like: What kind of shampoo does Adam Driver use? DON’T GET ME WRONG, THE INTERNET IS AWESOME. But the problem is that once we’ve exhausted a social media platform or googled away our questions, we often go about searching for other social media platforms or generating more random questions to escape the bottomless pit. Our addiction to the internet has put us in a vicious cycle no matter how much you try to entertain yourself with it, you will always return to the bottomless pit.
If you are finding yourself stuck in this bottomless pit, I know of a ladder that will get you out: guitar! I bet you weren’t expecting that and your head must be loading up with questions for google right now. But before you tap away into that search engine, give your fingers a break and allow me to provide you some answers as to why this magical instrument should be in your hands right now.
Letting out the feels
You just had a bad break up. On one hand, you have a glorious banana split sundae. On the other hand, you are on your phone, scrolling through your ex’s insta. The problem here is not the ice cream. What really needs to be addressed here is do you feel any better after confiding in your phone? Chances are, probably not. Stalking your ex will only leave you feeling more infatuated and make the process of letting go even harder. Right now you have two things you gotta deal with: feelings + moving on. Although you might not necessarily be bored in this situation , you will certainly be miserable and your phone is not going to help you, but a guitar will.
When you pick up that guitar, you have two options. You can either compose a song or learn a song. Either way, you will still be playing a song and every song is a channel for emotion. Playing a sad song after a difficult situation will make you come to terms with your emotions and accept them. Opening that bottle of emotions with your guitar will leave you feeling liberated of those hard, lingering feelings. Furthermore, guitar will help you take your mind off the tough subject because much of your brain power will go towards playing those strings instead of dwelling. If you ever need a way to ease off some tough emotions, guitar will be your best friend.
Becoming a Rock star
Your mouth drops. You cannot stop yourself from head banging. Your eyes are glued to that video of Angus Young playing that killer guitar solo on his gibson. Once the video is over, you cannot help but repeat it, over and over and over until that song is stuck in your head and …you get bored.
Instead of getting bored over your favorite song, how about you learn to play it? There are so many tutorials out there for guitar and so many arrangements ranging from easy to hard. If it’s your first time playing, start with an easy version of your favorite song. Once you master that song, you will have to play it 50 times on your guitar opposed to 5 times on your phone to actually get bored. The reason being that you will learn to appreciate the song the more you play it. You will become familiar with the beat, rhyming, and notes that made it such a great song in the first place. Mastering your favorite song will make you fall in with it even more and leave you feeling like a rockstar.
Making a Puzzle
All that fruit ninja and temple run must have left you feeling suuuuper unproductive and bored to the point you want to delete em off your phone. If you want to exercise some brain power, a puzzle is one of the best ways to do so. BLEH….puzzles? OK CHILL OUT DUDES, what I meant is that you should compose a song.
The beauty of guitar is that it’s easy to learn. A few chords is all it really takes to make a song and because of that, there are tons of songs out there. There are love songs, rock songs, and sad songs and whatever more the guitarists of the galaxy can come up with. Writing a song not only works the muscles of your fingers but it also requires you to use your ears and exercise your temporal lobe so you can come up with a tune of your liking.
The amount of work you have to put in to write a song will leave you far from bored. On the contrary, coming up with that song will leave you feeling like a mastermind and mad scientist because it takes a lot of brain juices and experimenting to make that baby sound good. The best part is that you get to perform it and woo your folks. Who knows, you might even serenade a girl to prom! That would surely be a thrill!
I don’t know about you but guitar is a gift of the gods. Now that I have shared with you its beauty, I hope you would hesitate to toss it into a volcano if the Greek gods descended from heaven and asked you to sacrifice either your phone or a guitar to save the world. Guitar does wonders, allowing you to channel your emotions, rock your mind out, or exercise your brain. If you find yourself bored out of your mind, whether it be from googling or counting sheep, I suggest you pick up a guitar.
Works Cited
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February 17, 2020 at 3:44 am
I use social media way to much, so learning how to play the guitar would be awesome for me. Truth is, I’ve always wanted to learn how to play the guitar but I’ve never really found the time for it. When I’m in college, or after graduating college I’ll probably start learning how to play. Admittedly, one of the reasons why I want to learn is to show off my musical talents to other people. Also, playing music can also be really therapeutic. Whenever, I’m stressed I really like to play the piano. I’ve also wanted to play the ukulele which in some ways is similar to playing the guitar.