Music, Goals, Fun, and In the Cards

Why does learning music have to not be fun? At what point does the drudgery become too much and the learner switches to MAKING MUSIC? There's a tension there between having fun and learning new things. Maybe they don't have to be mutually exclusive. 

I had fun with the Silver book. So I'm going back to it to play improvisations. I think that by really, no, REALLY working on internalizing the patterns and perhaps making up riffs within them would be good. Maybe being an expert improviser isn't in the cards for me. However, that does not have to preclude me from improvising at all.

I also can't help but still be drawn to playing songs in the chord melody style. What frustrated me was memorizing songs. Would love to be able to play on the fly from a fakebook in the chord melody style. But maybe that's not in the cards for me; or at least not yet. At this point I'm going to continue with the flashcards of Conti material. I think that by doing this, I'll better internalize the chords so that though I may not be able to play on the fly from a fakebook (yet!), I might be able to perform songs that aren't memorized, but worked on prior so that I can perform them with the lead sheet in front of me.