For a long time now (jeez, it's been about a decade) I've gone through phases of playing a lot for a few weeks or a few months at a time, and then setting my guitar aside and ignoring it until some sort of inspiration inevitably strikes, and I start playing again.
I happened upon a really good blog post on the blog of Tim Ferriss this morning, and it reminded me just how important it was for me to find practice material that I actually enjoyed playing in order to really learn how to play the guitar. For me, that was key. Focusing too much on music theory and compositions I didn't like playing took the fun out of playing the saxophone for me while I was in high school. I've tried to learn from past musical experiences when learning the guitar.
Anyway, Tim's blog has a really good post about learning to play the guitar: How to Finally Play the Guitar: 80/20 Guitar and Minimalist Music. The fret climb exercise he recommends is one of the same exercises recommended to me by a guitar teacher I had for a guitar class at a community college. I remember it really helped me learn to move my fretting hand around the fret board more accurately.
As Tim's post mentions, it's really amazing just how simple most pop songs are. Three or Four chords are all you really need to know to strum along with a lot of popular music.
Speaking of music, there's a song that I can't get out of my head. I heard it on KEXP for the first time a couple months ago. Then I heard it at the bowling alley last week. Now it seems to be for some reason deeply embedded in my brain. It's a catchy tune. And the video is hilarious:
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