learn drums

I have finally found my zone in playing drums. I’m no longer self concious about people hearing me and embarassed that I don’t sound good. I don’t sound much better, but now I have something to play. I was playing drums and I gave up, again, and left the garage. I got to my room and realized I still had my drum sticks so I just kept them in my room. While listening to music I saw my drum sticks lying on the floor and succumbed to the sudden urge to play. I just hit on my leg (softly) and the bed and tryed to keep up with the music. I felt stupid because I wasn’t playing anything near the drums on the music, but I had the basic beat down. After two days of doing this I finally got the courage to play my real drum kit and lo and behold, I had those basic beats stuck in my head and was able to play them as soon as I sat down. They were simple, maybe five notes repeated with one variation every once in a while, but thats progress! I’ve been doing this for a week now and it seems less stupid as I get more fluent and have a wider range of things to play.

I’ve been fooling around on drums for a little while now and I can’t seem to get much better. I’ve managed to learn one or two things, but after that I stopped dead in my tracks and haven’t gone much further. Any tips on motivation? Any recomendations for things to learn, ways to practice, techniques to look into?