I thought teaching guitar would be my dream job.
At 15, I knew I wanted to be a performer. At 17, I picked up the guitar. I had a great teacher who told me I surpassed him within one lesson (impossible, but it kept me motivated). I had a natural knack for it. Some talent. But I still had to develop it as a skill.
About a year and a half later, my teacher was leaving his job at a music store. He asked if I wanted to take his place teaching guitar. I said yes. It sounded cool.
So I started teaching. And within a very short amount of time, I realized: This might not be for me.
Teaching guitar drained me. Fast. Sure, it was nice that I got to play my instrument so much. If a student didn't show up, I could sit there and practice, mess around with tone, try different things. But I had to give a lot of attention to the students. Make sure they were doing the right thing. Make sure they were practicing.
And I'd often find a face staring back at me. "Have you mastered that skill already?" They hadn't gotten anywhere with it. They'd played it once or twice and were just sitting there. I thought, "Wait—is it not obvious that you need to repeat and practice this over and over to get good at it?"
I guess it was super obvious to me. Not so obvious to my students.
Don't get me wrong—I have my good moments with teaching. I appreciate it. It was an income source in my early career. I was a full-time musician for over 10 years, and teaching made up a part of my income. Yes, I ended up teaching for over 10 years. And every once in a while, even in recent years, I'd take on the occasional student.
But I thought for sure: This is a shoo-in. This is a dream job. I get paid to play guitar. Isn't that what I want to do?
And I found pretty quickly that it took up a lot of time. A lot of energy. I was supposed to have all this other time and energy to practice at home, rehearse, record, make music—and I just could not find it.
People sometimes think you can't figure these things out without going at it for five, 10, 20, 30 years. But in my experience? You can figure out pretty early on if it's not a perfect match.
I did my best through the years to conduct myself as a professional. To provide my students with the best quality training I could offer them. But teaching guitar just wasn't for me. It drained me too much.
In this post (and video), I share why teaching guitar wasn't the perfect fit I thought it would be—and what I learned about energy, time, and "dream jobs." https://davidandrewwiebe.com/?p=28039
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