Rambling through time and music

I've always been into music. When I was a kid I played music all the time, and listened to all kinds of music. Gospel, country, rock, broadway. It was all around me. My mom had a box of cheap instruments a triangle, sand blocks, a kazoo and a few other things. They bought me a cheap drum kit that I tore up within a few days. I think I was 5 or 6. My older sister wanted to learn piano and spent hours practicing. I would wait till she was gone and go figure out what she was playing by ear. Here and there people would show me stuff. I took piano lessons but my teacher fired me because I would just play by ear instead of reading the music and learning it her way. I was already playing stuff more complicated than what she was teaching me and I was bored. In middle school we had band and since everyone else was playing trumpet I picked the trombone. I remember my dad had an acoustic guitar but he never played it, there was an electric in our house to for a while. Neither of them were tuned but I would strum the strings and feel the vibrations. It was magic but I didn't know anyone who played. Just after I graduated high school in 1990 a couple of guys I was working with played guitar. I bought an old Gibson Sonex 180 Delux from a guy I knew. They started showing me stuff. One of them was real good. I still have that guitar, I love it. I don't play it as much these days but when I do its like coming home. Its so familiar and comforting but never quite as good as you remember. One of the problems I've always dealt with is that I can't focus on any one thing long enough to really nail it. I have to walk away from it and come back to it. I remember reading an interview with Steve Vai, he was saying that he would practice a single phrase until he nailed it. That he wouldn't eat or even go to the bathroom until he got it perfect. I can't do that. One minute I'm playing Van Halen, the next I'm playing Hendrix, (not as good as either) or trying to figure out how to play the piano parts to bohemian rhapsody on the guitar. I'm just kind of rambling here, but I figured Id put up some background.