I bought myself a banjo a few weeks ago. I’m a busy guy. I like to work. Admittedly probably one of my biggest challenges and weaknesses in life is just chilling. One of the things I’m enjoying about the banjo, and this is certainly true of guitar and ukulele as well, which is vastly different from say piano, saxophone, trumpet, trombone, or drum set, is that I can actually practice well and learn while literally just chilling …..so I guess perhaps on one level I’m not entirely chilling, maybe that’s cheating a little as far as forcing myself to slow down, but, still a pretty chill activity to me! I’ll take it!

Maybe you are a busy mom or dad, professional, entrepreneur, leader, active duty military—maybe you are a hard charging worker that rarely slows down (that’s my problem). Surely though, even if you work a lot, there are invariably times that you sit down and chill, even if only at the tail end of the evening. I am not really a TV/movie guy except for perhaps occasionally, we hit the sack too late and get up for the gym too early for that. I don’t like to just sit and scroll on my phone because it’s a waste of time and it doesn’t set a good example for my kids. So my new night time and weekend activity—banjo.

I’m having a lot of fun, and while I play a lot of instruments and am a conservatory trained musician on other instruments, what I am doing, anyone could do with a good teacher.  I am going through a great curriculum, one page at a time, learning the strings, the fretboard, how to tune it, how to play basic melodies and my first three chords so far. You could do the same with guitar, bass guitar, mandolin, or ukulele, and you can even do it in your jammies chilling in your bedroom.

The new year is just around the corner? Why not make learning a new instrument a part of your new year’s plan?