Where or who am I supposed to be? I’m not sure what’s going on, but I feel like I need to make a big change in my life. Perhaps at 30, I've come to realize that where I am in my life is not where I expected to be. Maybe it’s the fact that one year ago today, I started down a path, what I thought was gonna be the rest of my life. Touring.
I miss it, and hold one person personably responsible. Maybe my two friends that were on that journey with me don’t hold it against her, or maybe they do, but for some reason I don’t think I could ever talk to her again. I’ve thought about emailing her and trying to find out what the issue was, but I realize that it doesn’t matter. She, in some form, took my dreams and fantasies and crushed them, having a huge emotional impact on me. The night we dropped her replacement off at the airport, I couldn’t look, talk to or even think about anyone else but me and my two new best friends in the front of the bus, who now I would probably have to leave behind. It became an emotional roller coaster for the next week or so while we drove from Philly to Raleigh.
I don’t think I even told those two how I really felt about them, or how much they, meant to me. They gave me an opportunity to do something that I never really expected to do at that point in my life, and I love them greatly for it. Words are not enough to explain it; you’d have to be in my place, feeling what I felt at the time. Perhaps a large shaggy dog could explain it to one of them. To the other? I know that if I could succeed in this industry that it would make his year knowing that in some way, he helped me start, or rather finish going down that path.
I saw something that i’ve always wanted to see as a kid last night, and it did something to me. As it streaked across the sky at more than 7,000 miles an hour, and looked just like a plane; that was until it jettisoned its first stage and ignited stage two. It was actually really beautiful, and the spent fuel stayed illuminated in the atmosphere for the next 45 minutes or so. Something like that set me at peace. The same feeling I got on stage sometimes, or just driving thru the Kansas cornfields, or down the I-95 in South Carolina.
So now this over whelming feeling, of what can only be described as feeling lost, came over me this afternoon, and it scared me. I guess its cause I feel useless at work. I didn’t quit teaching for this. I realized that I can’t pursue a certain career path that I’ve wanted to do to, because as my father puts it, have “led an exciting life” and I agree. So screw them.
But now I’ve gotta attempt the impossible, or so it seems. Try and find a job in an industry unrelated to law enforcement, or music that will not decrease my earnings a great deal, which I feel it might. It seems that I'm too old to do certain things, and there are a lot of things that I almost had, or thought I would have by this time; a family, an “adult” type job (not low income like everyone I know out here), or a music career that leads to something. But it’s not anyone’s fault, it’s the way this city perhaps is set up. Or perhaps I’m just wining, so enough of that. Like Dennis Leary said once, “your life didn’t turn out like you expected it? Welcome to reality my friend.”
So is this an early midlife crisis? A nervous breakdown? I don’t know, but I don’t like it. Perhaps it’s because I’ve been through so much change in my life, perhaps I’m tired of exploring the options. All I do know is that where I am right now, is pointless, and unnecessary. Just think about how you would feel if you know that the job that your doing in unnecessary. Unnecessary you say? How? Well in the way that if you “removed” my actual job function that life at work would be unaffected. What I do every day is redundant and unnecessary, and extremely unproductive. I sit around all day and do nothing. And get paid for it! Now, I know pretty much everyone I work with would say, what’s the problem? You get to do nothing! Exactly my point. That is ridiculous. I need to have an outcome of my labor or rather lack of, to feel productive. Believe it or not I’d rather work for minimum wage than have a job where I do nothing.
Now the issue is how do I approach the big boy companies and not work for the little companies. I’m talking about companies that have been around forever, GE, Northrop-Grumman, Lockheed-Martin, Columbia, Clear Channel, NBC, etc. Not, Ma & Pa’s Grocery, Protect This Security, Mick’s Sticker Shop, or Vick’s Video Store, Popeye’s Boat and Marina, Pete’s Manufacturing Plant or Bob’s Country Bunker (no relation to the real one in the blues brothers).
But maybe reaching 30 is not so bad. Perhaps it’s a breaking point between childhood and adulthood. I always associated 21 with being an adult, but now that I think about it, why is that age so special? I had already had served in the army, been to college, owned a few cars and had a fiancé by the time I was 20. So what makes 21 more adult than 20? or 18? It doesn’t. It’s just a number.
The fact is that now I guess is the time to make a change. Maybe the feelings I had today were me realizing the fact that I can’t live as a kid anymore, not that I have been. But perhaps it’s my conscience or soul or whatever, telling me that now is the time to make a change. A different change. More different that touring the US, proposing to a woman, buying a car, moving across the country, saying goodbye to your dying mother, or losing the one you love. A change that is a life altering state of mind and breaks away from that which has been holding you back.
What that is or was I’m not sure. But for some reason, something clicked in my head after seeing that rocket last night, and I’m taking this as a sign that the way I’ve been living is no longer valid in a way. I thought I was grown up, but society dictates that you’re not grown up until you have a wife, kids, house, white picket fence and 2.5 dogs. But perhaps that’s not what being an adult is. Perhaps it’s a state of mind, I’m not sure. But I have a feeling that the road ahead will be long and hard and perhaps, finally,I’m up for the challenge.
