who plays the guitar?

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I want to learn. I have an acoustic Taylor big baby guitar. Does anyone have any tips? How has guitar improved your life? Do you meet people through it?

I am teaching myself to play guitar. I really enjoy it. My brother plays and listening to him play for me got me interested in trying. And I love listening to classical guitar music. I am still quite a beginner but I like learning. I learn completely by myself in the privacy of my own bedroom though so I don't use it to connect with people. For me it's more of a solitary activity that I can enjoy at my own pace to relax.

I also am learning to play the guitar. I started using Youtube videos, but something didn't sound right when I was playing, and I couldn't figure out what it was. I decided to take a continuing education class at the community college near us, which just started last week. It turns out the problem was my guitar, not me - it's about forty years old (I didn't know it was that old until my mom told me after the guitar teacher told me it wasn't in good shape). By taking this class, I have met some people, but if I hadn't decided to do that, I would just be teaching myself online, and not playing in front of anyone else, either. Unfortunately I haven't progressed enough to really have any tips or anything - I can read tabs and sort of play the very beginning of "46&2" by Tool, but that's about it. I really want to get an electric guitar, I'm using acoustic right now. I've borrowed a newer one from a family friend for this class. I have no idea what make it or the old one is.

I play badly
Has it improved my life ? Yes I find it very useful for distracting or forgetting about things , it's ultimate escapism for me ( I play till my fingers hurt ) .
Do I have any tips? I bought an electric guitar and bought the Rocksmith game , I found it great for jumping straight into learning songs. It's not designed for acoustic guitars but I have read stories about people using an acoustic. But Youtube is a valuable learning tool and websites like UltimateGuitar.com are great for getting tabs or chords , it has 100's of songs but I don't rate the Tab Pro service as it's pretty much like Rocksmith for me.
Do you meet people through it? If you have the confidence you could definitely try and join a band so I suppose it could help you meet people but personally I'm not interested.

Thanks for the replies. I recommend spending at least £300/$390 on a guitar. I don't know much else but I have owned about 5 or 6 guitars and the Taylor big baby is the first I spent several hundred on. Its so much easier to play. If your guitar is below that amount its probably going to be made from materials that are cutting corners too much.

am teaching myself baritone uke and tenor classical guitar. got the best inexpensive specimens of each [Makala Uke, and Hohner guitar]. slow-going, been workin' on it for 2 years now and I can do what I didn't think remotely possible, play and sing [croak] passable basic tunes.

Not sure the links are working unless its just my computer

That must be it, I have chrome browser

started with these...
https://www.learnandmaster.com/resources/Learn-and-Master-Guitar-Lesson-Book.pdf
https://www.learnandmaster.com/resources/Learn-and-Master-Guitar-Bonus-Workshop-Book.pdf
there’s a physical set with instruction dvds, but you don’t need them to follow the books, and the books are free if you don’t mind having them as pdf files.

haven’t played avidly in awhile, but have a les paul studio that was customized with lace nitro hemi pickups, and set with jazz flat wound strings by the time it was found perfect(have a small performance setup in storage. put it away for habitually just plugging directly into a 2w vox lil’ night train.). just a tip, you’ll never find that perfect sound and feel you’re looking for without spending as much on a pre-made guitar as you would a used car, and might never find it even spending thousands upon thousands(why some have huge guitar collections and still aren’t satisfied... personally only have two now, for a backup whenever the main might find itself in the shop)... so once you find a guitar you like, stick with it and experiment with non-body altering modifications and action adjustments until you find the sound and feeling you want(read heavily about anything you add, as parts and labor are too costly to just wing things and not appreciate them).

another tip, brand names can be deceptive, gibson for example uses quality woods and parts, but is manufactured in a very humid area by rushed american labor, so they warp when shipped to dryer areas and require much configuring and fixing on day one giving an entry level guitar experience no matter how much you pay. for example, wouldn’t recommend purchasing a gibson custom($2000-25,000) over an epiphone over $400(anything below $350 is entry line), and have had a really good guitar tech adamantly agree with that statement... terrible businessman, but brutally honest. gibson and epiphone, aren’t the same gap in quality as between fender and squire... squires(originalliy a string company) are best for kindling unless given modifications that put them in the fender price range. fenders are nice and some affordable enough to avoid squire. epiphone isn’t gibson’s entry line, but a guitar company gibson bought out.

personal style is a mixture of shred, jazz, and classical guitar techniques. might take it back up avidly if to find someone to experiment with. wouldn’t mind just getting into improv jazz, which would probably be percieved dated amongst peers.

only other thing that comes to mind, is don’t leave your guitar out on a stand. especially considering yours is an acoustic. humidity and dryness affect the wood... so leaving it out with constant fluctuations eventually leads to cracks in an electric’s finish, or splits in an acoustic's face. ideally for an acoustic, you should keep it in a humidified case, and crack the case open for a few minutes before fully opening it and taking it out for play.

I tried teaching myself, but found it hard to play.

Now the keytar- I think I could do that a little better

I tried to learn when I was nine. No dice. Wish I knew how in my early 20s; guitar-players got all the girls!

Good Luck in your learning.