Some Learning Taking Place

Okay, so I am not sure if I should be depressed or excited about this. Here's what is happening.

I went to the very first exercise in the Mooney "Walking Bass Lines" book, and this goes through all 12 keys. It starts in F. I like to play in F. Normally, I would noodle around with the exercise until my ears and fingers could play it and then I would try to let my eyes follow along. They never would of course. I would get a few exercises in, stop making progress, and quit.

This time is a little different. First I copied the exercise out myself, giving myself a little "pencil time," which is what I am calling it. My handwriting looks like a child's. I think back to the Autobiography of Malcolm X:

In my slow, painstaking, ragged handwriting, I copied into my tablet everything printed on that first page, down to the punctuation marks.

And this time, I tried to play the notes but they sounded strange. They didn't sound right. So I pulled out my handwritten copy of the exercise and thought I should analyze it. I read the text that came before it. This is a very, very, very simple exercise. I took it into the bathroom with me: "this is 2+2" I said to myself, realizing that for me, 2+2 is very hard at this point. As I type this, I can think of two categories of things one must know about this exercise in order to play it and understand it.

1. Beforehand: You need to know what it's in the key of F. You need to know that it's 24 bars. You need to know that it's I-IV-V blues. You need to know that the notes are only 1-3-5 notes of the triad. You need to know that the notes only come on beats 1 and 3.
2. As you are playing: For each bar, you need to know the chord for that measure. You need to know which note of the chord you are playing. You also need to know which beat of the measure.

So, the very first note contains all kinds of simultaneous knowledge that is required. You are playing the F7 chord; you are playing the root or 1 note of that chord; that note is F; it's the first beat of the measure; the note only lasts for one beat. That's a lot to know in that one second. And guess what? It all changes a second later.

Feels like I am making the simple difficult.