practice

This is something you'll know if you're a musician, or have ever tried living with a musician:

Practice is a sonovabitch.

My husband plays the guitar. Plays it pretty well, in my slightly-biased opinion. He's owned his guitar since he was young but it's only in the last few years that he's started practicing properly. Like everyone, he started out with three chords and Green Day's Time of Your Life; two years later he has a dozen chords and maybe twenty songs (of varying difficulties and competencies). He has calluses and is always losing his plectrums. So, he's a guitarist, basically.

(I also maintain the fiction that his guitar infuriates me. I'm always accidentally kicking it or knocking it over or spilling coffee on it. Actually I quite like it. Shh, don't tell.)

Anyway, the point is that my husband didn't become amazing at guitaring overnight. There were days and weeks and months of Time of Your Life and scales and bloody Tenacious D and failed bar chords. There's the "Does this sound in tune?" question every day (twice a day if I've kicked the guitar recently). There was nearly the loss of an eye whilst replacing an A string.

But he's stuck at it, and over the days-weeks-months there's been gradual but obvious improvement. And he's still practicing. Every day, in the free moments while waiting for me to get ready to go out, or while running the bath for our youngest, or when I'm watching TV (see, the annoyance is mutual). And he's still getting better, every day.

Practice is a bastard. But sadly, it's a necessary bastard.