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There was a school shooting today…

Ten people have been killed as of writing this…

It has happened again in America…

And this only happens in America…

Over and over again…

I truly fear that we will soon become a society where everyone will know someone who has been affected by gun violence…

We are becoming desensitized to gun violence…

Not by movies, or tv, or video games, but because real people, humans we know in our daily lives, are being killed in our schools, streets, offices, and homes…

All using guns…

When I was high school, I had a humanities teacher, who passed on an insight that has stuck with me;

A true artist doesn’t create great work, a true artist is always creating work.

This idea is always bouncing around the back of my head. The older I get, and the more I learn about the artist that I respect, I find that all of them, pretty much, fall into the guidelines of the insight. True artists are always making something. Either it is a compulsion to create things, or like Tom Wolfe, who wrote 10 pages a day, no matter what. They create.

So… I have to create all the time then.

I have been trying to get better, not that I think I am in the “true artist” group, but I feel more artist than not…

Which gets me to this old debate that I have been having with myself, and other, since high school, what is an artist? And can I consider myself one?

“No one should call themselves an artist unless they are paid for it.” – I think that’s how the line goes in KAFKA.

I do think it is like acting, such as the hardest part is just committing to character, and leaving all pretense of yourself behind. If you want to call yourself an artist, then you just have to own it, right?

I didn’t mean for this to happen, but I think I’m giving a pep talk to myself now…

I read a heartbreaking blog this morning about a mother finding out that her little son has stopped liking things because the other boys at his school teased him about it. The mother spoke about how she cried for 10 minutes because the world of peer pressure has started for her son, and the unseen machine of societal control has started its march of shaping her boy into a different person.

It stung me, coz I was that little boy. I can still feel the looks from the other kids when I talked about liking learning and school, and reading, and musicals, and an endless list of things I loved but was made to feel inferior for liking them. It happens to everyone, and the pressure does take a toll. Somethings I fought to keep, others I discarded in shame… It happens to everyone.

I just don’t want it to happen to my daughter.

And that is never going to happen.

But I don’t want her to react the way I did. Folding, and not standing up for myself. That is the trick as a parent; making our children stronger than we were.

I can grow one of the worst beards. Hands down, it’s just awful. Sparse in places, patchy, gray/brown and blond hair all mixed together… My face has a calico cat feature to it. Only in the last 10 years have I felt the urge to grow a beard. Before that, I was a fan of the goatee, as I was a 90’s kid. I could grow a nice version of that, and when it got to the point that it required some maintenance, then I would shave it off. It was a nice pattern to have with facial hair.

The beard came about when it dawned on me that working in New York City, no one cared if you looked scraggly at work. So, I would start growing one on Thanksgiving, and let it go through New Year’s. Then on New Year’s Day, I would shave it all off save for a moustache, which I would keep to the Super Bowl.  There wasn’t much thought put into it and the dates seemed right.

And not that I did this every year. Sometimes I would have a performance gig that I needed to be clean shaven for, or we would travel home to see family, and I wanted to look nice in family photos, and not homeless.

In 2016, I grew a Cubs rally beard for the post season, and they did win the World Series, so clearly, the beard as the key.

Currently, I have a too lazy to shave in the morning beard. I really need to get rid of it before it gets hot for the Summer… But that feels like too much work.

I seem to be doing a lot of that lately; just forgetting stuff. I have left home without my keys twice in one week, which is something I very rarely do. I forgot my wallet today when I left work for lunch. At work, for what seems like the past month, I have to be reminded about things that I have promised to do. I’m only 41… So, I’m not that old.

It feels like my memory keeps getting jogged all the time. Such as, I asked where a co-worker was today, and then I was reminded that they were on vacation. Now, the second I was about to be told this information, in my mind, there flashed the image of the email that was sent out to the office last week stating that they would be out. It’s as if I’m one step behind.

As stated above, I’m not too old, so I must think this is being caused by other factors. The first is that I have not being sleeping well at all; kid-o, work stress, life stress, I need a vacation stress… But I went through other periods of stress and lack of sleep and didn’t forget things all the time…

Or did I, and now I have just forgotten about it…

That’s spooky…

Like the realization that I have never directly seen my face… it’s only been a reflection off of a mirror.

Anyway… I’m forgetting stuff all the time now.

I have had to write everything down, and I use the reminders in my phone. What this makes me feel like is that I am living off of a list all the time, and everything feels scheduled.

This could be what it is like to get older after all.