Lori Linstruth: How can you write on a “guitar blog” when you no longer consider myself a “guitarist?”

An interesting post from one of the best female rock guitarists around. Lori has decided to stop the guitar after struggling with a bout of depression and come out the other side. Lori has decide that there are other things to do and other things in her life that currently take precedence. I for one will miss Lori's excellent playing and hope it's just an extended hiatus, but wish her well on her future musings.

Lori Linstruth:

I’m going to be making some massive changes here, and want to give my current readers — all five of you — fair warning. But first, some background:

I started writing on the web about my passion for guitar 2003, and moved from a static website to this blog in 2006. In 2007 I went through a major depressive episode (or burnout or nervous breakdown or whatever you want to call it). Bouts of depression have dogged me pretty much as long as I can remember, but the Great Darkness of 2007 was worse than anything I could imagine. It was truly life-changing. I won’t bore you with the details: the important thing is that I got better.

Even so, three years later it is finally sinking in that I crawled out from the darkness a very different person. Some things have changed for the better, some for the worse. Some things are either better or worse depending on how you look at it.

One of the things that changed is that playing guitar no longer gives me pleasure. I’ve fought against this fact for three years and it’s brought me nothing but stress and guilt — I KNOW what I should be doing to “rekindle the flame.” But I don’t WANT to do it. And because I can count the times I’ve played guitar this year on one hand (with fingers left over) I no longer identify as a “guitarist.”

How can you write on a “guitar blog” when you no longer consider myself a “guitarist?”

The truth is, I can’t. And I won’t. And that’s the real reason I’ve not written more the past couple of years.

Fortunately there are still plenty of things that interest me, and plenty of things I want to write about and share. But because of the guitar focus of my blog, I’ve not felt “entitled” to write about them here. I’m sure most would agree that it’s a crappy situation when someone feels that they can’t be themselves on their own f’n blog! So I’ll be reworking this one as a personal blog, and it will no longer be guitar centered.

I still HAVE my guitars, and who knows, I may become passionate about guitar again one day and write about it again. My last “guitar sabbatical” was 10 years long, and when I started playing again a few years ago I was keener than I’d ever been before. But until that happens, I’ll be focusing on other things.