Practicing

Practicing: A Musician’s Return to Music is a book about the dream of becoming an artist. Drawn from my experiences as a child performer and concert classical guitarist, Practicing tells the story of my youthful ambition to achieve musical artistry, the collapse of that ambition in my twenties, and my surprising return to music later in life. As a child and young adult, I practiced full of passion and expectation, certain I could change peoples’ lives with music. In my late twenties, despairing of a viable career as a classical guitarist, I quit in bitterness. For ten years, I couldn’t bear to touch the instrument. Now, in my forties, a lover of music chastened in my goals, I’ve returned to practicing to understand what went wrong, to learn to do it better.

• Glenn Kurtz's blog at The Huffington Post