I don't know if I can put into words what I'm thinking or feeling right now. Have you ever had the experience of being in a moment and suddenly realizing who you are? Actually, not realizing, remembering. I was that person once, but I've strayed so far from that path I had forgotten how much I liked her, and how much I miss her. How can I get that person back? I have to reevaluate my life and make some decisions about where to go from here. I would have to go back to the beginning and start over if I am to become that person again. I don't know if I have the guts. It's so much easier to be the responsible adult and sacrifice myself to the grind than to try to do what I know I have always wanted to do.
I'm about the same age now that my dad was when he had to make the same decision. The difference is, I don't have a family to take care of. Not that it bothered him much, he left anyway. Spent 10 years traveling the country with just his motorcycle and his guitar, playing covers in any dive that would give him a cut. It amazes me sometimes how much I am like a man I never really knew, but I am him. My family says I'm a clone of my mom, and if you see the two of us together it is a little frightening how much we look alike, but I've always acted more like my dad. My brother got the talent and I got the desire to make a living out of it. It hardly seems fair, but that is life, as they say.
When I started college as a music major, my mother was horrified. When she learned all that went into the music engineering degree, she was a little relieved by the calculus and physics requirements. She thought that I would have some hope of finding a job when the music thing bottomed out on me. Supportive, huh? But she sent me a card later in the year with some joke about marrying a rock star, and under it she wrote "don't just marry a rock star, be one". Sometimes I think I should've taken that advice. Of course, how many people go to college to be rock stars? It's been so long since I've taken that idea seriously. I can't play anymore. I haven't written a song in years. How can I start over now? But tonite, sitting around my apartment, listening to one of my students playing my guitar and singing along, I realized, this is who I am. I will never be happy pretending to be a librarian, or whatever other profession I try to throw myself into. Music is the only thing that gets to me. I don't have a passion for helping people find books or research articles. But turn on the radio and I'm completely lost to the world. Nothing else exists except that song.
As Oprah says, find your passion and live it. Maybe this time I will take the advice.