Originally posted on Facebook HERE
Thinking about time today… lotta “time” songs running through my head. “Time is on my side” – stones. Pink Floyd’s “Time”… Cripes, even Hootie’s “Time”. Of course, the Hootie song is the one stuck in my head. Funny how songs get stuck in your head, isn’t it?… it’s often not even a song you necessarily like at all, but it gets in there and you pretty much have to try to get another song stuck in your head on purpose to replace it… but I digress. Was talking with my friend Timm Buechler yesterday who recently lost his father at a similar age as my father was when he passed (early 70s). We’re both in our fifties. If I live to be 71 (age my father was when he passed), I have 13 years left. Not much time. Last Friday we played a show in Oshkosh and a friend of ours from high school came out to see the band (Mathew Miller), then died in a car accident later that weekend (RIP, Matt). Time waits for no one (another stones song). It’s already October first, the year is blowing by, the days are blowing by, time speeds up the older you get. None of us gets out alive. My musician friends know we also lost Cookee Coquoz last week as well. “Life is a sexually transmitted disease and the mortality rate is one hundred percent.” – R. D. Laing. Knowing this, how do we choose then to live our lives? “We’re gonna die anyway, so let’s party?”… I’ve heard that before. I’ve LIVED that before. On that I think Animal House said it best: “Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life, son.” I spent 15 years of my life addicted to drugs and alcohol. From age 14-29. Why? I needed to know darkness. I needed to know despair. I needed to know that while it might sound like a good idea, “we’re gonna die anyway, so let’s party” is no way to go through life. You just die many smaller deaths before you get to the big one. I struggle a lot with time. My business eats up the vast majority of my time. Thank God I love what I do, but… what’s the cost? I’m not as healthy as I’d like to be, I don’t get enough sleep, I almost never do yoga, I hardly find time to meditate and/or read, and it’s very hard, almost impossible for me to disconnect. There has to be a happy medium. I’ve been working with a life coach (Alisha M. Wielfaert – she’s fantastic if this type of thing interests you) to help define my values, what’s important to me, and really take a long hard look at what I’m doing and how I’m using whatever time I have. We all have things we think we’ll get to “someday”. There’s an old CCR song that was redone and used on “Sons of Anarchy” called “someday never comes” (I’ll post a link below). All those hopes and dreams you’re not pursuing because you’ll get around to them “someday” will probably never see the light of day because today, right now is the only moment we can control and tomorrow is guaranteed to no one… and someday never comes. Today is the day to take a long hard look at whether you’re living the life of your dreams. Today IS “someday”. I’m going to be doing a month long series of speeches in January, one per week for four weeks. Details to follow. Setting a deadline helps get ideas to the forefront. I’ve wanted to do this for years. And now I start planning finally – because today is someday. The Twistin’ Egyptians (my old band) recorded an album in 1987 that never got released. We figured it would happen “someday”. That album will be released in the next year – because today is someday. I’ve been trying to write a book called “Feed Your Angel” for years. That book will be published by 12/31/18 – because today is someday. What is your “someday”?…
