Why I wanted to learn
My family could not afford lessons when I was a child, so I never learned. Years later, hearing a particular piece would produce the thought "if only I could play that".
Actually learning it turned out to be very different from the thought.
Three walls adults hit
1. You cannot stand how badly you play
A child plays badly without caring, because they do not yet know what good sounds like.
Adults do. Your ear has heard real performances and your hands cannot produce them. That gap is genuinely painful, and it is where most people quit.
What I eventually understood: sounding bad is a required stage, and the more you mind it the slower you go. Accepting it made progress faster, not slower.
2. Practice time comes in fragments
Children practise an hour a day. Adults squeeze out twenty minutes.
Fragments still work. The key is touching it daily, even for ten minutes. Skip three days and it takes a week to get the feel back.
3. Nobody is watching
A child has a teacher. An adult practising alone fools themselves easily — plays it wrong and thinks "close enough". Your ear is not fooled; if it sounds off, it is off.
I started recording. Play, record, listen back. A recording is far more honest than my own ear in the moment.
Why it is worth it
The value was never learning a particular piece.
It is the reminder that some things simply take time and cannot be rushed.
With code I have tools, templates and AI — a day now produces what used to take a week. Music does not work that way. Muscle memory and the ear only accumulate with time.
That feeling of "cannot be rushed" is rare in this era. I value it.
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