By the time I read through this thread the first time I had forgotten that you (Marty) are my age--this changes everything. You are too old to play like Doc Watson. If you follow Mr Fielding's advice you will be able to maximize your time left. If you have an excellent teacher it will help, and yes you can enjoy playing the guitar anyway. But no, you will never be able to play like Doc. I've played for thirty+ years and I now have arguably the finest teacher in the land. He's not mentioned in the same breath with Doc, Tony, Norman, Dan (Crary), Russ et al (unless you asked them) but he is that good (and those on this site who know his music would heartily agree). When I sit across from him and hear him play it's evident that he probably learned what notes to play about 25 years ago and learned what notes not to play at least 15 years ago. We are in an age group of diminishing time and diminishing capacity but it doesn't mean we enjoy the music any less

John