Busy life

Life had never been busier than that time. The time I have been spending in the office kept increasing. The responsibilities at work kept piling up. The work kept growing. While I was growing in my professional life, my personal life had taken a backseat. I would be home for less than 12 hours of which 7+ hours would be spent on sleep and getting ready for the next day. In this busy life, my guitar lessons had taken a backseat too. Neither weekdays nor weekends, I had been touching the guitar.

I moved from my childhood home to a new home within the city. While moving, I carried the guitar myself, because I did not trust the logistic team to handle it with care. I had been sitting uncomfortably in the car with guitar on my lap than letting the logistic partner handle it for the fear of them damaging it. Though I had not been practicing, it was still an important part of my life.

Then came the 2020 pandemic. While I was confined to my own home, I had been completely occupied. The workload had been so high that I had no time to breathe. I had been taking my meals sitting in front of my laptop while attending meetings. In all this chaos, I would glance at my guitar with pain which had been sitting in a corner of my room. I would look at it and think about my dream of becoming a guitarist and playing at a concert. A dream that sparked a creative passion in my heart now had started becoming a distant, unachievable future.

Days passed, situation had not been improving. Of 24 hours, I had been working for 18 hours. I had been working on holidays and weekends as well. The time I would get after work, I would spend in taking rest to gear up for the next strenuous day. I had been feeling as if the work had overpowered everything in my life.

Days turned into weeks, weeks turned into months, months turned into years. I had not touched the guitar in over 5 years. Besides regular cleaning and dusting, I had not played the strings in years. I would occasionally play it for someone's birthday but that had been the limited use of it.

My beloved musical instrument which used to bring me joy, had now become a pain for me. Whenever I would look at it, I would feel sad and disheartened, because not only I had not been playing it, but also it had been sitting and collecting dust. It had been over 10 years after buying it, but I had played it hardly 50 times. I could see that the usage of guitar had been going down. With no time to spare, my plans of learning and practicing had not been going in the directions I wanted them to go.

Then there was a sunny morning. I woke up and sat on my bed. The guitar was right in front of me. I looked at it and made a brave decision. A decision that was beneficial for both of us.