Have I been keeping the faith?

Hell yeah.

I've been putting in 1-2 hours each day with my guitar. The very least that I do is scale exercises, mostly I work out of the Leavitt book. I've re-started the Leavitt book; I obtained the DVD edition, and it's so much more complete with the DVD that I felt it would be good to go back to the beginning.

In addition, I'm also revising everything else about my playing; my left hand technique (aiming for a more correct embechoure), my right hand technique (minimizing motions, changing pick holding, changing pick type).

One interesting observation from the Jazz Guitar mailing list: there's too much time in the woodshed, not enough playing of gigs. I'm not ready to gig right now, but even if I were, I'd be lucky to play once or twice a week, and not for good money. I'm going to have to figure out my own solution to this. The problem is that with too few gigs, music becomes more and more academic.

This is the same reason that we end up obsessing about gear, and which pick to use, and how pure the signal chain is, and all that nonsense. If you're actually playing, there's no time for that garbage. You grab your guitar and go. It's when you're woodshedding, or especially if you're avoiding woodshedding, that you spend that time.

Lately I haven't even been plugging my archtop in for practice sessions; I'm trying so hard to focus on my playing and my playing alone, that I could really give a damn about tone and all that nonsense. Even intonation isn't that that big a concern. A concern, yes, but not life-shattering. I'm spending way too much time on the stuff that doesn't matter, and way too little time with the instrument in my hands.

But I'm fixing that problem, slowly.