Learn to play a new musical instrument.

“Frequently, I’ve found my immediate response to being unable to find the right fingerings on the fretboard, properly sync my left and right hands when playing, or play a rhythm correctly to be frustration and a desire to put my guitar down and do something else. The finished product I desire is so tantalizingly close. I hear it every day in the music I listen to – excellent guitar players executing complicated chord changes and sliding with ease up and down the fretboard – and it kills me that there are hundreds, even thousands of hours of practice between my current skill level and adept musicianship. This is natural, though. Frustration is a normal part of the learning process.”

“There is often literal pain that accompanies learning to play an instrument, and this, as much as the technical frustrations that arise during the learning process, can be a terrible deterrent for new musicians. In the first week or two that I began playing the guitar, my fingers were constantly red and sore from being unaccustomed to pressing on a hard fretboard. I persisted, though, and by playing just five minutes a day I built up callouses and gained some strength in my fingers. Now, I don’t struggle nearly as much with pain or pressing while playing.”

“My first instrument was the piano. This might sound weird but when I learned violin, I easily visualized where all the notes were on the fingerboard like a piano keyboard, and coordination between my arms and fingers felt pretty easy to figure out. And from knowing the violin, I picked up the mandolin REALLY quick because their notes are the exact same, and the viola was pretty easy due to technique similarities (wacky clef though). For something like the recorder though... as someone that has played string/percussion instruments their whole life, breathing to play an instrument is an entirely foreign concept to me lol and I thought it was really difficult”