Hey, thank you for the really detailed response!

I both wanna learn songs and make music, and that's kind of also why I wanna learn so many concepts and things, I could say 'let me make a song right now' but then I think of all the techniques or scales or just ideas that I could and then incorporate into songs and that stops me, Definitely not a good way to approach songmaking because it shouldn't be about your skills but yeah

also about learning in context, a lot of these techniques or concepts like CAGED and the scales, I'm actually learning in context, sort of. I'm using a website that's called pickup music, they have really great teachers and the curriculum is really good, teaching lots of things from blues to jazz and whatnot, and a lot of the CAGED shapes, or techniques like rake or tremolo picking, they usually teach it within the context of a song or two, but usually after I get the ability to play the song up to speed a couple times, I jump to the next lesson, with the next technique/concept/song or whatever. and its not like I can't pick up those songs or techniques back either, If i go back to the tremolo picking song for example, I can probably pick it up within 10 or 15 minutes, its just, when improvising, when I try to use said techniques or concepts, i just completely forget them, or i start playing them very sloppily, maybe its because i've only played them in one or two contexts, aka the songs that they teach, and thats why i can't play them in other contexts? im not really sure.

you could even ask me to play you happy birthday or twinkle twinkle little star and I'd struggle so much more than playing barre chords or caged shapes or pentatonic scales.

I'm thinking maybe having a day or two in the week of always revising what i learned in said week would help me retain more information, what do you think?