Hey folks,
A little about myself...
In April and July of 2015, I had two strokes. The fortunate side of this was that the effect on my cognitive and mobility abilities was minimal.
Unfortunately, the strokes took the majority of my vision. I was diagnosed with Non-Arteritic Ischemic Optic Neuropathy. I am considered legally blind but I am, thankfully, not completely blind. My vision is like looking through two large straws. Unfortunately, even that vision is rather blurry and there appears to be a haze over everything. I can't drive and stuff so I'm permanently and totally disabled.
They say that losing one's vision is akin to losing a loved one. At least from the perspective of dealing with the loss. I can attest that this is very true. After losing my vision, I became very depressed. I rarely left the house, literally, for months and months.
It has been a REALLY long road of recovery and over-coming depression. The doctors have told me that I needed to find a hobby; find something to do. My wife says so too Well, as a boy, I played guitar (enough to strum and play rhythm). I started playing piano around the age of 18 and that has been my primary instrument since then. I'm 45 years old.
So after a year or so of consideration, I've decided to take up guitar. I'm really looking forward to it and I've heard this is a great community.
I've done a lot of research and decided on a
Taylor 414ce-R. (I'll do a NGD post perhaps even though I've already received it) I'm interested in thumbpicking styles of Doyle Dykes, Tommy Emmanuel, Pete Huttlinger. But I'm probably MORE interested in the flatpicking solo guitar style of Robert Bowlin. I've been watching a lot of videos trying to figure that out. Although, another forum has been telling me I have the wrong guitar for that style (flatpicking), I think it's the right one
What say you?
Excited to be here and hope to meet lots of new friends.
Tom (DEGG)
