What I’ve tried
I bought a practice pad and some drumsticks.
I printed off some rudiments from the Internet.
I practiced for about 3 weeks. Not consistently though. Not for very long at a time either.
I got bored and put the pad and drumsticks away. This was about 18 months ago now as I write this.
A frustrating and embarrassing false-start. You see I have been wanting to play drums since I was 13 years old. I am now 55. I’ve always had some excuse. First, I was a kid and my mother wouldn’t buy me a kit.
Then I was an “adult” but I lived in apartments or rental houses. So while I could have gotten a drum kit and practiced at any point in my timeline, I didn’t. Sure I wanted to be a good neighbor and tenant, but that was really just another excuse.
Then I became a home-owner. But I didn’t have room for a drum kit. Or the time to dedicate to practice: the ol’ family/career chestnut. Again: more excuses.
Now, I’m going to depart onto a tangent and talk about lifting weights (a.k.a. working out, a.k.a. training). I want to communicate this to you for 2 reasons:
- learning discipline + commitment
- our home gym
Jim Wendler is the author and creator of a workout methodology (program) called 5/3/1. I won’t go into the details about the program, but one of the things he pontificates is discipline over motivation. Expressed thusly:
It’s a math formula. It means that discipline will win out over motivation every time. If you are motivated to workout, for whatever reason, you’ll workout once. Maybe for a week. Maybe for a month. But as soon as your motivation wanes, you will quit working out. What I learned is you have to develop discipline during the period that you are motivated. Discipline goes way deeper than motivation. Discipline is a personal commitment to yourself. If you have the discipline to train every workday, or every other day or 3 times per week; then nothing gets in your way of notching that workout in your log book.
Put another way: Motivation can lead to Discipline, Discipline leads to Commitment.
There’s the subtext: you gotta have Commitment. To a goal, to yourself, to another person (friend, spouse, family member, workout partner) whatever. But the bedrock idea is you are committed. [end rant]
Lifting heavy weights, and having the discipline to lift those weights no matter what, has given me so much in Life. I recommend it. The lessons learned can apply to learning to drum.
I’m currently motivated. This site is being produced currently during a period of high motivation. As the days/weeks/months pass you’ll see my motivation wane. My hope is that during this period of high motivation that you see discipline start to creep in and displace motivation. [NOTE- this site also serves as a sort of commitment]
More on this later as it is a topic that is very near-and-dear to me but I don’t want to get bogged down here.
Next is our home gym.
I built our first home gym in 2015. I had been recruited to go to work for a Tech company in Colorado. This meant leaving my beloved fitness center that my employer provided. I was on the Fitness Center Committee. I worked along side a few other like-minded co-workers to transform the typical ‘fitness center’ to a base-level cross-fit gym. I was more interested in black iron, but cross-fit was having a moment- so I rode the coat tails. I tell you this simply to illustrate my commitment to this gym and the subsequent loss when I moved my family.
So the garage in our Colorado home was co-opted for gym space. Then our time in Colorado ended. We moved our home gym to Vermont. We were only in Vermont for one year, so the memory of moving the gym equipment was still too fresh and we were moving to a rental that had less room than our Vermont rental. So we sold the gym equipment.
Fast forward, we bought a home in Arkansas. We have a 36×60 metal building that we built a home gym in. We’ve outgrown the space we dedicated to our home gym and we are now in the process of expanding the gym. This means that the space that is insulated will now be free for me to use as a drum room. Pics to follow, but basically we have a 12×22 room built in our metal building that we insulated and used as a home gym initially. Now that room will be a dedicated drum dojo.
That’s it for this initial post. But there is much to unpack and I’ll be revisiting many topics touched on here in the near future.
Thanks for reading.
