I suppose it boils down to having the listening and playing skills to express what you want to say. Is that where you are now? According to your own bar, do you place yourself as beginner, intermediate, advanced, something inbetween?
I would put myself at intermediate after all these years. I can more often than not get into the neighborhood of what I want to say but still a long way from my own bar in both listening and playing abilities.
I would put myself in the intermediate/advanced category when playing alone, more beginner/intermediate when playing with others.
I suspect that has to do with how little time I’ve spent actually playing with other people. Music and playing guitar has always been kind of a personal things with me, but I do regret not having to had the opportunity to play more with others.
Never wanted to be a rock star and not real comfortable calling attention to myself, just would have liked to have spent more time jamming on the porch with others.
Yea, it definitely is a different world playing solo vs. playing with others or a band.
Ugh. F me. This is what I was trying to do, make a general reply. Don’t like this forum software much. 
Nowhere near lol. But I keep moving my own goalposts. Kinda wanted to be a shredder starting out, then was more about songwriting, but not from a performance aspect, then stopped playing for a long time, now I’m all into playing/singing/performing both covers and originals. So from playing staring at my fingers willing them to go faster through complicated patterns to playing simple songs while singing and not looking at my hands at all hardly lol.
This forum software takes some getting used to, where most of us are probably used to vBulletin and similar forum software.
What you described is pretty much how I have headed along the way too. To me songs have taken a front seat over all else. My guitar playing could still use alot of work though.
Yah, wish I had taken a more balanced and complete approach earlier on. I would no doubt not be struggling or at least as much now with things like consistency, my #1 issue. It’s a fun challenge though, and finding that flow state for that few seconds maybe I can here and there, like maybe a verse and chorus, is very rewarding. Makes me feel like a reeeal musician not just a drummer. 
There are still a few licks I don’t master at all. Those licks are nothing special, I just didn’t practice them when I started out as a classical player on nylon strings. I want to become a good rhythm player with a pick these days. Sometimes I feel I’m back on square one.
My shits always shit. Sometimes i watch michael angelo baito videos just to remind myself that technicality isnt musicality, but my shits still always shit. <listen, select, delete, repeat>
I used to be pretty good at classical guitar (Conservatory of Music graduate, 1988), but after graduation I diverted my attention to a career in law and my skills quickly went down the hill.
Use it or lose it. Still love to play the instrument, though having lost several fingertips of my right hand in a climbing accident (frostbite) many years ago really doesn’t help.
Tony sez, “You’re not wrong there, mate!”
A happy, accidental discovery for me. I recently bought a used Marshall amp, decided to mic it when recording instead of using the line out.
What I found by having the amp pointed at my face is how much better I hear what I’m playing, and my mistakes.
I still suck, but at least I have a better idea now as to why.
I’m coming to terms that I will never be this good