As I start a new year I usually have goals or an agenda. This is the first year I really don’t. Six years ago January started in turmoil as I came to terms that I was not happy in my marriage or where my life was going.
The following years I worked on trying to save my marriage, coming to terms with my wife that we could not, and preparing to separate and the drama that goes with it. Soon after that I was getting my house prepared to sell then not having it sell for a year, being four months away from bankruptcy and then finding a buyer.
The next adventure was finding a new place; going through the ordeal of buying it and then moving in. This was then followed by the mourning of leaving the only place I called home since I was three, ending a twenty six year relationship, and starting a new life in a new place and living alone for the first time in twenty four years.
This year I can say that the dust has settled in my life and after all that has happened I just want to chill. Also for the first time in my life I am tired. My schedule with all my projects and the day program some weeks can be grueling, but I love what I do in all of them and it’s my choice. But I am starting to see some cracks in my armor.
When it’s a Friday night at eleven pm you have been up since 5:30 am and your are in a comedy club in Manhattan sitting in a stairwell freezing waiting to go on, you sit and wonder how long can I go on doing this? Wouldn’t it be better to be home watching a movie with a couple of cocktails?
When you are lugging musical gear into rock club and then tripping over yourself and everyone else trying to set up to play for thirty minutes in front of twenty people, you question how long can I go on doing this?
The radio show takes a toll on me as well, two and a half hours in rush hour traffic to go there, a three hour plus show, then two hours back home, no lunch as I am plugging the show and then outside of that, three hours to do the I Heart clips every week and then the two hours to write a blog every three weeks.
The day program also takes the life out of me with the stress and the customers and then coming to the fact I may never get out of there.
Actually I do have goals and one of them is I want to concentrate is my health. I always thought I was invincible but I am finding out I am not. I am a diabetic and I am now feeling the effects. But as always I still have that feeling that the fight has been brought to me and the only answer is victory.
Another goal is I would love to go a vacation this year. I have not been on a vacation in eighteen years. Please don’t think that going on the road is a vacation. I have been afforded to work at some nice places, but the fact remains you still have a task to complete, and that is a show.
I would love to go away for two weeks and get away from everything. No phone, no gigs, and no rehearsals. I would love to wake up in the morning and not have to do a mental rundown of what I am doing that day and what I have to prepare for and load into the car.
The conflict is the money to go on vacation, everything I do costs me money, and you may ask do you make money? Yes but it all gets funneled back into everything I do and I break even and in some cases lose money. Once again how long can I go along doing this?
With this one of my goals this year is to get my fiscal house in order and watch where ever dime is going. I had spent years with someone that took for granted and did not understand how much the bills were. I also spent last year spending money for a divorce, furniture, a new roof, and all sorts of new beginning stuff. Even though my wife did not contribute as much as she should with expenses she did help somewhat. Now it’s only me.
One thing I have been considering this year is quit doing everything, yep I am done. I don’t want any of this anymore. I am just going to go to the day program, come home, watch the TV shows that everybody watches and go to bed by 9:30.
On the weekend no shows either, I am going to watch All the Family, The Jeffersons, and Barney Miller all afternoon. Then I am going to Stop and Shop and do my Grocery shopping, come home, eat dinner, and then watch a movie and then go to sleep.
Sounds great,,, No all the above to me is an existence and not in my DNA. I can’t do it. There is nothing I would rather be doing more than a show and so there lays the conundrum.
So what will I do?? I don’t know Barney Miller is on.
Happy New Year.