Setbacks are sometimes just opportunities in disguise…

Life throws us curves. That's not always a bad thing.

When last I left the gentle reader (a year-and-a-half ago!), I was careening happily down the road on my bicycle, well on the way to raising money toward my endowed scholarship for students. Life was good. In fact, I was halfway to my year-long goal of riding 2023 miles, which many of you had generously pledged to support.

Then one June morning I had chest pain bad enough to land me in the hospital for a few days. And to make a long story short, I had developed recurrent pericarditis, most likely brought on by a bout of asymptomatic covid. I won’t go into the details, because frankly by now I am completely bored with them (as I suspect many of you are, too). But to summarize, my days of cycling long distances are for all practical purposes pretty much over. Needless to say, the scholarship thing went kaput.

Instead of talking about that, though, I’d like to talk about the fun bit—namely, since I couldn’t ride my bike (or do much of anything else that would raise my heart rate), I decided that it was high time I learned to play the guitar. Naturally, it only took about a month of piddling around with a borrowed instrument before I decided that what I really wanted to do was make one.

And so I did. I am, in fact, currently on Guitar #3. I’m closing in on finishing it (after which I will work on #4, because this is fun, y’all), but I ran into a snag over the weekend and I’ll need to backtrack a little to set it right. Anyway, here is a photo that shows what it looks like so far (with the fingerboard all taped up in preparation for the dressing the frets):

Yes, I made that—soup to nuts, it’s all my work*. And if you haven’t been following this quixotic journey of mine on Facebook, then to get you up-to-date, here are photos of guitars #1 and #2, respectively:

To the untutored eye they probably look pretty good, but believe me, these are the work of an amateur luthier, with plenty of mistakes. I will say however, that Guitar #2 sounds lovely.

I’m not going to do a reprise of my Facebook documentation of the build processes for each because frankly it is just too much trouble. I’m merely letting you know that all this has transpired since last we spoke, and that I may be picking up the story in mid-sentence, as it were, and moving it from FB to this platform. Or maybe I’ll revive my blog, “The Voyage of the Margaret Mee,” and carry on the conversation there. I don’t know for certain. It’s an evolving train of thought.

Facebook has become…not much fun. I don’t really need to elaborate on why that is, do I? A lot of people are de-camping to one platform or another…or staying put on FB through indecision and inertia, which is where I am at the moment. No platform seems to be something that would satisfy the Goldilocks in me**. But as I think about what I do or don’t like about various social media platforms, I mostly end up thinking that I am sick of their endless, monetized, attention-grabbing noise—the mindless reels and rants and memes and ads and click-bait, and and and...

Please, give me some peace. Please.

I’m looking for someplace quiet and thoughtful, sans sturm und drang, and far from the madding echo chambers of FB, X, and Insta (and yes, Bluesky, which promises to be just MOS***). So when I think about it, what I really want is some good, old-fashioned long-form chatting—you know, thinking and writing about wide-ranging topics that are on my mind in a free-form, heterodox, sometimes funny echo chamber of one. Substack may not be “just right,” but it lends itself to this better than the rest. It allows the creation of that space more than the other platforms by giving the author control of what shows up on the page, and the reader the option of subscribing to it.

(As a brief side note, another reason I am considering moving back over here has to do with dropping the ball on the pledge drive to boost the scholarship endowment. I have an idea, and it involves a guitar. I dunno for sure, though. That, too, is an evolving train of thought. I’ll let you know.)

Anyway, this is me, a voice from the not-too-distant past, dipping my toe back in to see how the water feels

Feel free to subscribe if you have not already. This space is free, because sometimes we just need something that lifts us up, no strings attached.

*Earlier versions had pre-fab elements, such as the bridge or the neck, that I purchased from a luthier supply; I made the body and headstock and put it all together. #3 is completely made from scratch. It’s a learning process, which is best kind of process of all.

**Or maybe this story is more about the Three Little Pigs, and the quest for a perfect house, one that will not burn down, or blow away, or be filled with ads of dancing bears trying to sell you something…

***A mapping term from my geology days, meaning More of Same