Blink of an Eye

Another weekend gone as quickly as it arrived. It seems not to matter whether it's filled with friends, family, home projects, and shopping, or just sleeping late and sequestering ourselves to recharge our batteries.

It's unbalanced. I spend five days a week working my job and two days a week -- the weekend -- working and managing my life. I've always said that I'll work to live but I won't live to work. I wish I could say that I'll live to work. That would mean I'm working my dream job and leaping out of bed every morning looking forward to all the wonderful experiences that the day has in store.

If I were still hammering out a backbeat in front of adoring fans, I would be living my work -- happily. As it is, I have a job that I like well enough on good days and can just stand on bad ones. I count my blessings because it could be a lot worse and, by comparison, I don't have much to complain about.

I'd better get back to work. I have things to do today and before I know it, it will be the weekend again.

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.