Each of the last three of mornings, as I've been getting ready to leave the Airbnb, I've heard strains of classical guitar music coming through the walls. At first, I thought it was recorded music, but by the second morning, I listened closely enough to realize that it was someone practicing. And boy did that bring up some emotions.
When last I was in Spain, 24 years ago, I still had aspirations to pursue classical guitar as my vocation. I practiced three hours every evening during my stay in Madrid, and I never once felt like I was somehow missing out on being there. Practicing like that was just something I did. I was pretty dedicated.
I burned out not long after my return to the States. Back then, I didn't know why I burned out, but I do now: My practice was always rooted, if you can call it that, in the future. It was like, "Someday, when I get good at this, I'll finally enjoy it." Almost never did I come out of my head and truly experience my practice in the moment.
If your motivation is external to you, you're asking for that motivation to collapse if you ever sense, as I came to, that in reality there'd be no real satisfaction upon attaining the destination you imagined. (Or, perhaps more accurately, that there is no such thing as a destination at all).
But in hearing that phantom guitarist play these last few mornings, I was struck by something that I lost when I burned out, and haven't really ever much grasped over the intervening two-and-a-half decades: the classical guitar is a beautiful instrument. And I'm kinda feeling that maybe I miss it in my life.