Backbeat and Boredom

Yet another day begun by clawing and scratching my way out of bed so I can sit behind my desk and struggle against boredom and fatigue.

Actually, the fatigue is entirely my fault. If it weren't for the absolute necessity of sleep, I'd do away with it all together as a complete time waster. I have better things to do. As it is, I shoot for six hours a night, knowing I'm happier with eight or nine, but content that I've spared myself a string of psychotic episodes resulting from a lack of REM.

The boredom...well, that's all about me also. There are times when my job is anything but boring, usually when there is some routine emergency that requires my immediate, stressed-out focus to solve some bizarre problem. And there's rarely any middle ground. It's feast or famine. I could almost compare it to being a firefighter without the risk to life and limb. In a perfect world, I'd be a professional musician.

Correction - I would still be a professional musician, but that's a trip down amnesia lane for another post.

I am classically trained and have had a love affair with music ever since I can remember. I began playing trumpet at nine years old and was awful - as all beginners are. Apparently, I just didn't have the ambiture for it, so I switched to clarinet for the next six years. I was competent, but never excelled. Then, after a battle of wills with my orthodontist, I sheepishly approached my band director after my night brace had been wired into my mouth making it impossible to play. He sighed heavily and made a "go hither" gesture towards the back of the band room and said, "Go play drums or something".

I was home.

I took to it immediately and quickly became as good as the percussionists who had been at it for years. At the risk of sounding conceited, I was embarrassingly good.

Although I intended to continue drumming, I only joined the high school marching band at the urging of my best friend - then a trumpet player - who insisted I was a great drummer. I suspected he was blowing sunshine up my ass, but I knew it was well intentioned. As it turned out, I was the lone percussionist in my graduating class that continued in band. Of the original three that I joined in ninth grade, one of them tried out for the football team and the other two had evidently enjoyed all the structured music programs they could stand.

I was just getting started. My drumming would be one of the anchors in my life for the next eighteen years.