It’s bloody freezing and the wind is simply tossing the car around. We’re managing to stay in one lane, but only on average – and everyone around us seems to be holding themselves to the same standard. Looking forward it’s like watching a normal traffic scene filmed by a drunk, watching whole lanes of traffic waver back and forth disconcertingly.
Last night we had our first PLOJ in about a year. It was a lot of fun but would’ve benefited from a couple of other players. It’s funny, what with working at HMT, I’d have assumed I knew a greater variety of instrumentalists. We had a flute, a banjo and a cello, but other than that it was guitars all the way. At least the sex ratio was a little better – Jess, Bethany, Heather, Acacia Sears – we had at least four “girls with guitars” and Kristen on cello, a couple of women joining in with vocals… normally PLOJes have been something of a … “sausage fest”. But the ladies came out and represented last night.
Ah, “sausage fest”. Such a graphic term. I always imagine naked men in a bathhouse of some sort, pointing and gesturing with their “breakfast meats”. Ahem. Too far? MY damn Journal.
This morning I was having panicky thoughts in the shower. Not the normal stuff about sharks and tentacles, but the heart-chilling reality of finances. Like it or not, Life is a one way trip of cyclical exhaustion – it’s like swimming laps but only being allowed to tread water. There are goals to be set and swum towards, but the majority of it all is about repetition. We soil the dishes and clean the dishes. Doing laundry. Making money, spending money. Living, breathing, exhaling, dying. Realizing what goals you DO have is important. I think a lot of people are simply working towards retirement, creating families in the background… nest eggs and 401ks sort of a side effect of just how they’ve structured their Lives.
Automation helps. Dishwashers and clothes washers. Having servants would help – but there are two types of people: one can make all the time in the world, and the other can spend it and still have nothing to do.
Me – theoretically I’m in jobs that I can do the rest of my Life. Perhaps not a the rocking full-potential, but at some level – and if not as a musician, then as a visual artist. I’m not worried about the prospect of having to work every day of my Life, because I enjoy the things that I do. What concerns me is the idea that whereas it seemed realistic to make a Living like that a year or two ago, now it feels like I’m really, really struggling.
My objective for a LONG time has been to Live on my own terms, doing what I want to do. Tom Waits said it best: “I want to do what I wanna do and I wanna get paid.” It’s not THAT hard a goal when the things you Love to do are marketable and you have an extremely modest standard of Living. Raising a family would change the equation dramatically, but that’s simply not something I want. I’m too angry, too selfish – ha – and yes, far too poor. The objective hasn’t changed and for that matter the standard of Living really hasn’t either, but as everyone has noticed expenses keep going up. Health insurance is especially painful, spiraling upwards at an ever increasing rate – but everything from guitar strings to gasoline is expanding like a frightened animal, and I’ve got to figure out how to make my income inflate simultaneously.
And so I’m thinking about art shows. About pushing web design. About doing this, that – and also the other. Probably playing a couple of more solo shows here and there, just to change things up. It seems like thinking outside the box changed my Life about 6 years ago – but has put me in a different sort of box ever since. Time to break THAT box and build a new excitinger box.
In other notes – overheard cellphone conversation: “Yeah, last night was great, but I’m really not looking for a relationship right now.” The guy was picking breakfast cereal out at the supermarket. Points for multi-tasking, I suppose.
