"Walk before you run."

Passacaglia

Hear you, Jay. My struggle is a tendency of the last several years of being quite the hermit, a previous, gregarious, cheerfully social nature pretty dimmed (another story); so I stay trying to get, and play out. I can easily hole up, but founding and running a weekly jam keeps me with other players.

Just an addendum, hope it's not entirely useless for others - but I've been thinking on this quite a bit. I think Anthony, you were probably right, at least part of this is just fear of trying something I'm truly not good at; Jay, Denis, Hanear, many others, also hear your thoughts on not necessarily seeing an "either-or" of improved rhythm and soloing.

Also go back to something Pierre "Kamlo" Barré mentioned last DIJ: There's no difference between lead and rhythm. Both run, when playing. I hear the wisdom, and trying to put it into practice.

I take to heart my rhythm work isn't there yet; it just doesn't correspond with what I would like to express, yet. So I do a lot of daily rhythm practice. I'm also finding the lead I practice seems to make my rhythm better, and the rhythm I practice seems to make my lead playing better. So far, it's most obvious, for me, in my right hand...which is where I put the lion's share of my daily attention.