It's Alive!

About two months ago, during the week of January 30th,  2012, I commenced to temporarily shutting down as a writer.  I put every one of my writing projects on indefinite hold, and I envisioned the main one -- the final revisions of my newest manuscript -- to be lying under the sheet in my imagined lab like Frankenstein's monster.  Or in the case of someone with a mechanical bent, like a car without an engine, sitting under a tarp in my imaginary garage.  Either way, you get the idea.  I was walking away from some unfinished woodshed projects, and even though I was leaving them as such, they were made tidy and clean in their incompleteness.

The next month would be an experimental excursion into corporate America, a journey that I had always fantasized about but never really had an opportunity to realize.  The ideal version of this fantasy starred me sitting in a cubicle doing my work quietly, whatever that work was, as long as it was my responsibility and as long as I could do it without much thought.  But in taking the opportunity that was available to me, I was unexpectedly thrust into a world in which I simply didn't belong, one in which I could not function in any healthy sense.  Sure, the month-long training was a snap.  I can navigate through any classroom-type situation being that I'm an admitted career student.  But graduate from the hypothetical and into the applied, and, well, I soon understood why I was approaching the age that I was and had not yet held a job in sales.  I have since decided to give teaching a second stab, having already done all of the legwork a few years ago to get into the system.  I just never did any actual teaching, putting it on hold as my musical opportunities took off.  Such has been the story all of my life.  And my music career is still well into liftoff, it's just that this year, I'm all about the Benjamins!  I am thankful, however, for my journey into that particular level of corporate America, reminding me of where I belong, teaching me that although I have no real confidence when it comes to arguing with small business owners about their business, that I can certainly argue with younger, less-experienced students whose education is my business.

Which brings me back to the monster under the sheet, and the thrill I allowed myself on Monday, March the 19th, 2012, when I yanked back the cover and revisited my works-in-progress.  The truth was that I really couldn't afford the time to think about them in any productive way, and on more than a few occasions, I've actively had to put my work out of my head.  I know, "Who doesn't?"  Sorry.  In my case that would be suicide.  It's what gets me out of bed in the morning.  Say what you want, I don't think that's any way for an artist to live.  And live I will, as will my work, both of us once again, alive!