September 16th, 2014.

I guess my relationship with anger is rather inconsistent. There are some things where I unreasonably reach for being pissed off right from the get-go. I can be prickly and I know that. There are a couple of triggers for that spikiness and I try to be aware of them and to short-circuit that rage, but I’m probably not really that good about it.

On the other end of the spectrum, there are plenty of circumstances where I’m really SLOW to get angry, sort of because I can’t quite believe the other party realizes what they’re saying, and it’s only in hindsight where I’m just uber-offended.

I had a phone conversation like that this morning that’s slowly getting me kind of riled. Someone who gave me a ring to ask if I was interested in a gig, which is always great, but when it came down to it, probably not something we’d be interested in…  the conversation eventually painted the place as a sports bar – which is all fine and good – but the owner’s been shelling out a decent amount for Live music and has been disappointed in the results and was therefore looking for some new acts and had turned to one of his friends for advice… his friend turned to me.

Now, as the pitch unfolds, it’s not that they’re looking for better bands or acts with a better draw, but they’re looking for people who’ll work cheaper. Naturally, I get the call. And when numbers were initially mentioned I was sort of like “great, that’s what we often ask for” – but no, that’s the number they’re trying to cut down from. Notions such as “well, you know, like Teavolve – oh, you get paid for that?” and “well, he’s been hiring bands and he’s looking for something cheaper, and I was like – have you tried ‘original’ artists?”, the list of people that my “friend” had called already but noting that those people have bills to pay now… and what it boils down to is that he was looking for someone interested in coming to a sports bar and playing for exposure… you know… to help out the bar…. Or something…. Because it seemed like something I’d be interested in. And when I politely declined he had the gall to kind of sound offended and beyond that, implied that “well, I guess you don’t do a LOT of originals anyways, right?”

Yeah, so recounting it all now definitely has me kind of pissed off and I’m sort of interested being aggressively angry about it, but really, it’s probably not worth my time. Especially on a beautiful day like this. Yeah. As a matter of fact, eyeballing the environs of central Indiana, the rolling hills, the sunshine and the light cloud cover, all the trees one could shake a stick at… I’m getting paid to play whatever I damn well please tonight. And tomorrow. And the next night…. And the night after that…. And the night after that…. I guess it’d just be a little more socially acceptable if people didn’t act SURPRISED by that fact.