Yeah it just goes to show that hobbies are like icebergs.

I picked up a guitar in Covid and managed to learn basic chords and songs in the first year of playing it every single day. I'm 4 years in now, and I feel less advanced than I felt back then.

I think it's because when you're learning a new technique, you fucking suck at it, but when it's in counterpoint to other techniques that you can do to a high level, it sounds worse than just one technique being played badly, plus you've trained your ears over the time you've been playing, so you can hear the bad bits better.

Guitarists that have been playing for decades have more of these techniques down so they sound better, but that's just to people who have struggled with those techniques themselves. To the uninitiated guitarists are just guitarists, some play country and some do that wiggly wiggly guitar solo thing.

Guitar playing is an Iceberg with a big bit sticking up, chess and rubix cubes are smaller icebergs, but you've got to mine it all the way down before you can climb to the top.