I make my life complicated on purpose.
You see, I’m one of those people where my brain is always going. But I’m also someone who can lose interest or focus over periods of time. As a result, I keep a lot of projects going, both at work as a web developer and at home. In addition to the usual family roles/things I do, my main hobby is music. But I play guitar, I play keyboards, I play bass, I write, record, produce, and release my own music. I run this website and I run the budgetguitarist.com YouTube channel, where I make one video per week, released every Friday at 5 p.m.
That’s too much, but we’re not done. I also like to work on guitars. I know how to refret an instrument, but I haven’t done enough of them to consider myself “good at it” yet. I know how to do electronics, though I’m not the greatest at it. I am good at guitar setup.
And when I get totally burned out on music for a while, I’ve written and released software. I had a part time company that released two iOS apps, but my partner went to work for Apple and I eventually shut it down. Oh, and I built my own home arcade cabinet.
Get the idea? I’m no good at sitting on the couch and watching TV all night. TV is mostly stupid. I do watch a lot of YouTube, and some Disney + and Netflix, but I’m usually sanding something while I’m watching.
Please don’t take this as bragging – I am the definition of Jack of All Trades. I’m a hobbyist at all of this stuff. But I wouldn’t have it any other way. I do EVERYTHING on my own terms. Some of it makes a little money, but we’re talking very little. I eat, drink, sleep, and breathe music. But I worked in music retail and didn’t like it. I do like computer programming, so I do web dev for a living and it’s FUN.
My wife is a saint. We do walk for an hour every night and talk. It’s my favorite part of the day.
You must be patient to read this far. Here’s the thing: When I get some money to spend on music, the different “departments” in my head start arguing. Right now I’m having a massive debate over whether I should buy an external monitor for my computer or an Arbor Press for putting in frets. The Arbor Press is going to win, because I’ve been wanting one for about 4 years now. But the internal debate took a week. Working on guitars is something I like to do, but not all the time. Working on a computer is something I do all day, so maybe I don’t want to stare at a 27 inch monitor when I’m not working. My 15 inch laptop retina screen is plenty fine. But it does take longer to edit videos on it. But I do have a 24 inch monitor I already own that I could use. All I’d need is an adaptor. And that’s what sealed the deal.
But also in the debate was a Raspberry Pi 4 and that Fender Shawbucker 1 pickup I always wanted. It’s always something. I’m over 50, which means I already own everything I need and I’m now buying better versions of what I already own.
But the Arbor Press is going to really be something. It’s specifically designed for fretting. I’m putting in the order tonight. It’ll take two weeks to get here. I need to order some fretwire, because I know I’m going to want to do a refret with it right away! I might one day be good enough to charge people to refret their guitars, but that’s a bit scary, isn’t it? Oh well. I have a guitar collection, so there are plenty of candidates for refretting around here.
