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Playing music was and still is the one thing I wish I could do. I have tried several times, painfully, over and over again, and trying to get my head around playing an instrument. There was the cello in the 4^th grade (I cannot justify why I did that to myself), the trumpet in 7^th grade, guitar in high school, and drums in a garage band that never played a show. The last attempt was my best, but all of them were awful.

I can carry a tune, just not well. As with most people, I am just a frustrated musician.

When I think back on all the times that I tried to learn an instrument, I wanted it to be easy. I wanted to be the guys that picked it up and it just made sense, or that I picked it up and it happened. I think that is why I had the best success at drums. I could keep a beat. If I tried to get more complicated than that, that’s when I ran onto trouble.

Being immediate and in the moment, are still the two things that get me going when it comes to crating art. Like jazz, and the Beat writers, and Jackson Pollock’s painting, they are all arts of the moment of creation. Sure, practice is needed, but the art improvised. Playing off other artist, or music, or the emotional moment.

There was something that was in my head, and it seems to be gone now. I think it was a really good idea to write about.

I got the idea when I was running this morning. And when it popped into my head, I was like, that it something I should write about today. And I was confident that I could retain the idea…

Not really, and now I have to come up with something new.

So… I forget things now.

The first way to look at this is that I am over 40, and it really isn’t that uncommon for people of this age to start to have small lapses of short term memory. And that is the easy way to go, following that line of logic that just about everyone does.

I like to think I now have more shit to deal with, and there is just so much that a person can be expected to remember. When I was in my 20’s and didn’t do shit, sure, I remembered everything. Now that I am 40, with a wife, kid, career, finances, friends, and a host of other things pulling at me, sure I forget things.

Sure, I threw something away last night, then immediately asked my wife where was that thing I wanted to throw away. That’s just want happens to people who get shit done.

As long as I don’t forget my anniversary.

My wife had a function at her work last night, which I attended. What she didn’t tell me was that she had also invited some our friends as well. I had a bit of a surprise when I got there and saw people I knew and hadn’t seen in a while.

As I talked to one of my friends, who is a creative in the theatrical world, we started discussing about how many people in theatre leadership positions (Directors, writers, composers, producers, act…) are just plain shitty to everyone. I’m talking assholes, unrepentant. Now, I’m not confusing demanding your best types, as those people at the end of the day make you feel better about yourself. I’m talking the full blown, shit in your Wheaties, assholes. And there are so many of them in the theatrical world.

As we told our war stories to each other, this thought came to the top of my head, and I blurted it out, “And all of these assholes are the most miserable people I have ever met.”

And we laughed…

And then I thought more about it… And it sort of is true. The greater the artist, the more that hate themselves and everyone around them.

I love Kerouac’s writing, and spent a good amount of time researching him, and that was my conclusion I came to after reading several books about his life. He was pretty awful to everyone, and the only way he could cope with life was to writer about, in essence, how much better it should be.

This is my second day back at work after having been away on a week of vacation. It sucks, and I would rather be back where we were staying.

On the last day before our return to NYC, the “Sunday Night Blues” set in. That dread of having to go to school and the fun is over. We got it twice, as we came back to the city on Friday, and then didn’t return to school and work until Monday. So, on Sunday, we had the blues all over again.

That dread of having to return to something that you don’t like is a part of life that I wish I could shake. The only time I remember not having it was when I dropped out of college and was working some pretty awful dead end jobs to make ends meet. In that period of life, I worked weekends, so there was no dread of Monday. Most of the time I had Monday and Tuesday off. Depending on the job, I would even have a third day off during the week as well. My memory was that it was a Thursday.

Now that I am thinking about this, that was the fun thing about awful dead end jobs; your weekend was during the week. The lines were always short and retail people were pretty happy to see you.

Other than that, living in poverty is awful.

To conclude; I would prefer not to work. If I have to work, I prefer dead end, but I disliked poverty. Hence, I have to go to work on Monday.

Living in the New York was always a dream of mine, and I have wanted it for so long, I don’t remember a time when I didn’t want it. I know for sure that I wanted it when I was in the 11^th grade, and I feel it was something tart I wanted when I started theatre in the 9^th grade which puts me about 14. But, I can’t remember a time when it wasn’t a goal. It was so much a goal that I have kept a New York quarter with me, in my pocket since 2001, when the Fed started issuing those quarters, as a daily reminder where I was going.

I believe in the power of a goal, because I am here now, and I seem to have etched out a life and family in this place. I might not be top of the heap, but I am in the heap.

And having a goal was something that my Grandma always kidded us about. “You gotta have goals. If not, then you have nothing to look forward to.” Rather sage grandmother wisdom. This phrase, and I can hear it coming out with that Midwestern accent of hers, has stuck with me. Usually, when things get down and I wonder what it is I am doing in life, her phrase will come back to me.

Get a goal, any goal, and work towards something. No matter what, the feeling of accomplishing something, even a little thing, is better than the feeling of having wasted a day.