I’ve been playing guitar for 33 years, mostly for personal enjoyment. However, if I’m being honest, I haven’t enjoyed it much. Frustrated is a more appropriate term. One of my goals or “resolutions” for 2026 was to finally lock-in and learn guitar theory and enjoy playing. I promised myself that if I wasn’t having fun playing guitar by the end of the year then I would finally give it up and free up the time spent banging my head against the wall. Fortunately, I had a free guitar theory course bookmarked on YouTube that I found out about from Reddit. It’s called “Absolutely Understand Guitar” and is taught by a man named Scotty West. It’s made up of 32 episodes, each about an hour long. Well, one hour in I was hooked. I’ve finished the course, and not only do I finally understand what I’m doing (not to be confused with being yet good at what I’m doing) on the guitar, but I can clearly see a path to (in Scotty’s words) being “satisfied” with being a guitarist. I plan to go through the course a second time with a more hands-on focus. Thank you, Scotty and the AUG team for creating this masterclass and keeping me from quiting.