Dreams to Remember

The right place at the right time.

Is it an excuse for our failures or a true reason we never got our chance to shine? Were we really just not in the right place at the right time, or were we just not really very good at what we were doing?

Take music for an example.

I’ve known so many musicians that I thought were great. I thought they had all the necessary talent and ambition to make a name for themselves. My friend Shannon has a magical voice, writes compelling and excellent songs, has gigged incessantly for the last decade, and has a nicely marketable appearance. My only conclusion is that either I overestimate his talent (which I don’t think I do) or I have to conclude that he was never in the right place at the right time for the right people to hear him and buy into what he’s doing.

Or maybe it’s just the plight of the music industry and the only way to make it now is to find your audience on your own.

I don’t know.

I don’t know.

I am 33 years old these days. For some of you that sounds nice and young and I have my whole life ahead of me. Some of you are ready to issue me a walker.

I had imagined so many things to have accomplished prior to 33 and very few of them have happened. I can blame the “bills to pay” and I can blame the circumstances. I can say I was just never in the right place at the right time.

But maybe it’s more personal than that.

Maybe the problem is that I have lacked the courage to really pursue a better, more meaningful life. Maybe I continue and continue because I’m too lazy to really try something different.

I don’t know.

I don’t know.

As it stands, I have a day job that somehow became a career. Unfortunately this seems to be the only thing I have succeeded at over the last 10 years. I have a band that hasn’t played a show in a year and can’t seem to finish it’s CD. I have a novel that is half completed and growing at approximately 1 page every 4 months.

I have been wondering lately if it is too late to start over. All these bills to pay and what not make it feel very hard to do so, but I just don’t know about going through another decade of this.

I still haven’t found any rich relatives that I can count on dying any time soon. Or any time at all. Apparently I have no rich relatives.

Too bad.

Courage friends. Let’s see what new dreams we can come up with to help us get through the dreary perpetual now.

My latest carrot on a stick is becoming a College Professor.

But it’s a really long stick.

And a really expensive carrot.

And so on.