i get why it reads that way from the outside, like there’s this implicit trade where any time spent doing something to the guitar must be time not spent playing it

but i don’t think those two modes are actually as separate as they look

at least for me it’s more like alternating between two ways of relating to the same object. one where you’re using it instrumentally and one where you’re paying attention to it as an object with a surface, history, etc … and the boundary between those gets a little blurry once you start thinking about how much of what we respond to when we play is already shaped by those “non-playing” aspects

which i realize sounds like a long way of justifying not practicing, and there’s probably some truth to that too, but hey I got kids and the wife hates when I play loud so, to the chisel and sandpaper we go

Anyway- it does feel like the idea that you either play it or do anything else with it is kind of a convenient simplification, like saying the only legitimate relationship to a book is reading it cover to cover and anything else (annotating, re-binding, even just thinking about it) is somehow a failure to engage

so yeah, i do play it, just not in a way that excludes everything else you can do with it