I am aware that I'm out of step here. Am I addicted to gear? Yes, but I dont feel good about it.
I've played for 50 years now. Until 2015 I just had a couple of guitars. I used them correctly. I loved music and the guitars were just music making tools. That's how it remained for 45 years.
In 2015 a personal crisis left me 'disconnected'. There was a hole in my life, I started to fill it with guitars. I have learned a lot about guitars since then beyond using and maintaining them.
The trouble is that hole is bottomless, and there are not enough guitars in the world to fill it.
Music is still the important thing. The guitars are enjoyable but that's all. Some are pretty, but they are still just tools. I feel I am addicted and sick.
Here's where we might be 2 of the same, but with a different background:
I think that playing guitar connects us to our childhood, because the music we grew up listening to is the music we most often prefer over music from more recent years. It defines us as generations of people who each experienced different music genres as to what formed us emotionally and spiritually.
If perhaps you don't have children of your own, there is a certain respect that goes with that, but many times we often live vicariously through our children, in hopes they may grow and learn to love what we did at their age. While most true musicians make a honorary pilgrimage back to their musical roots, in honor of the early guitarists who defined the genres, we also hope that someday our children will also take that same journey that we did when we first learned how to strum, then play lead lines.
There were many bands who defined who we were when we were teens, and equally so, our kids are carving out their own niche, their own place, where they can express their feelings via their instruments of choice.
This sickness you may feel is perhaps an anxiety or fear of the unknown. Let it be known that you need not feel this way at all, you just need to shine a light on in the darkness of what you fear, so that the unknown becomes more visible. The future is much like the unknown, and the fear is of what could happen. The answer is, speculation is a cruel trick that you mind plays on you, and it affects not only you, but many of those who fear the same thing.
What dispels anxiety and fear? 1) Good preparation. In worst case scenarios (that college final exam, for example) you need to focus and prepare for what lies ahead. And since not one of us accurately can predict the future, we need to take precautions and preventive measures, just in case. 2) Good education. Learn the facts about what disturbs you the most in life. There are many things that fear of the unknown has caused, including significant societal upheavals and unrest, simply because of fear of the unknown.
The facts are what will boost your confidence levels and help you gain insight.
For example, do you feel badly at times because you are trying to save money for more important things, and fear that you might not have enough to meet your expectations? Realize that the world economy hinges on this. The economy hopes that you will feel badly, because advertisers know that if you buy something, it will satisfy your anxiety and calm you. Advertisers count on this basic tenet of human nature. In fact, many people encourage you to spend money you may not have, so that they can feel good along with you once your "new arrival" is delivered.
It's almost like we're all a bunch of expectant parents watching from time of conception to delivery date, from gestation period to arrival. As the delivery date gets closer, so does our level of excitement. That may be what drives us, the feeling of ordering and expectation, then the birthing of the new arrival, with obligatory photos and bubble gum cigars, back-slapping and congratulations.
THAT feeling may be the drug that is addictive, because unlike childless parents who have not experienced childbirth, we may feel like there is no future for us to live through. No children who we raise and watch grow, teach basic fundamentals to, or watch them become parents themselves.
Without that hope of connecting to our past, our childhood, we may all just be substituting guitars for a family of our own. Instead, we have this forum filled with expectant fathers and mothers who give birth to new life in ways that is like the ring of the doorbell, with your new arrival waiting to meet its siblings in its new home.
