I really am a nerd at heart. I got started writing code much older than most of my peers. I didn't grow up in a tech saavy family where I was using a computer from a young age. We didn't have a computer in the house till I was in high school. So finding out I had to write a term paper in eight grade using footnotes made the fact that all I had was a typewritter to use rather interesting. It meant that I had to guess where I was in the page and add my footnotes accordingly. I was bullied a lot throughout childhood. As I look back now I don't know if it was because I came from a large family (eight kids) and relatively poor compared to the other kids, or if I really was just that dorky.
My high school years were spent mostly without any friends and as socially awkward as they come. My only real interest was music. I enjoyed watching my brothers play high school football, but was never going to be able to do that. I just didn't have the body or mindset for something like that. I remember thinking my older sister's New Kids on the Block tapes (audio, and video) were really cool when I was young. My mind was blown the first time I heard Metallica's Black album. My older brother bringing that and other music home really opened up my interest in a wide range of rock and metal music. So as a teenager I began collecting music and developing my own taste.
For years I wanted to play guitar, but growing up in a big family where no one played instruments there just wasn't anyway that was going to happen. The only person I really knew of that had played guitar was my maternal grandfather Jim Sanders. I had been stories by my mom about how her and her sisters had loved sitting around while he played his acoustic guitar and sang. I knew I was never going to play folk songs like him, but I really dreamed of playing rock songs that other people actually would want to listen to. Eventually after years and years of asking my parents for a guitar, my grandfather sent me one for Christmas. I think it was like a $40 or $45 guitar that he had found at a Harbour Freight hadware store. It was nothing special, but I loved it. I couldn't believe that my dream had come true. I had no idea how to play it and I drove my family nuts with all the noise I made with it. Although it's monetary value is next to worthless, it hangs on the wall of my home office and will continue to hang there because of it's sentimental value.
My high school had a guitar class so I signed up as soon as I could. Although the class only lasted half the school year, I signed up to take it twice in a row. I remember bringing my guitar home after that first class with my guitar finally tuned properly. The music teacher would play the notes on the piano and we would do our best to match the same sound on our guitars. I remember walking in on my mom and older sister and strumming the six open strings and asking, "Do hear how much better that sounds?" I think they were amused that I was so excited that over it finally being in tune and not sounding completetly horrible.
That guitar really was a great comfort to me through those awkward teenage years. It felt like not much went my way during that time of life, but music and guitar provided great solace to me. I was never very good, and really I'm still not that great. The thing that it allowed me to do was express my feelings in a constructive way allowing an outlet. In the same way the Foo Fighters music spoke to me on a deep level, I was beginning to understand that I could write my own music for me. I have a terrible singing voice and no one likes to hear me sing, but when I was alone in my bedroom with my guitar, the rest of the world didn't matter.
I remember getting Metallica, Nirvana, and Foo Fighters guitar tablature books because I wanted to learn to play the kinds of stuff they did. It didn't take long before I realized that my talents for guitar were fairly limited and I didn't have the natural talent of those famous professional musicians. I remember listening to the Foo Fighters cds and then looking at the books and thinking, "how do they do that so perfectly?" I remember looking at the chords that were outlined in those books and wondering how they figured out how to make such awesome sounds with unconventional fingerings. In my guitar class we mostly played open chords and barre chords, so what Dave Grohl was doing was very new to me. I remember watching videos of live performances of the Foo Fighters and seeing how when they played what their hands did looked comfortable and natural. I had been so caught up in wanting to do it exactly as the book had it that I didn't realize that playing the chords with the right time as was more important. I also realized that they didn't play it perfectly as the book showed either when they played live.
The big lesson for me with this was that perfection was an illusion. It was something that wasn't really necessary or possible. It let me know that imperfection was ok. I remember going to church as a kid an wondering how the organist could play so perfectly. As an adult when I go to church I notice with a wrong note is hit on the organ or in another special musical number, but it doesn't bother me. I don't play perfectly on the guitar so why should I be unkind to someone else who has put themselves out there and willingly performed in front of an audience? I get horrible stage fright to this day and most of the time just play without anyone else in the room.
To this day I still prefer to play my own songs and not learn and play the songs of others.