Power of the Moment

This has been an albatross for me most of my life.  As much as on the surface I seem to be very organized and together inside I am constantly fighting the battle of the inner voice saying, “Did you do it?  Did you do it? When are you going to do it?”

In my professional life there are deadlines.  Something HAS to be done by a certain time and if it isn’t I won’t have a job.  Hundreds of people make up the fabric of getting a project shot whether it be film, TV, commercial or any other creative project.  You are given a date and by God you better meet that deadline or else.

But life has a way of not really caring about when something is done or if it gets finished at all.  The only person who suffers is you and you can be very hard on yourself.  I am much harder on myself than any production.  In the back of my mind I know that there are people expecting me to deliver and the task is very clear.  But what direction I choose in my personal life is another story.

My son is going through a time right now where he thought he knew what he wanted, went to school for it, got a degree and was ready to take on the music world.  I knew when he chose his profession it was going to be a hard road.  Especially choosing being a jazz musician.  But no matter how much you can express what you think they have to find their own way and discover for them what will work and what won’t.  Have to say it’s hard to watch sometimes because you know how hard it was for you when you were their age.   I keep telling myself the best gift I can give him is his independence.

But here I am going off on a tangent and procrastinating with what is really the root of why I do procrastinate.  Someone once told me that if you don’t make a decision, you can’t be blamed.  And God knows I love to blame myself for not having the insight as to what is my next step.  Because if I take that step and it’s the wrong step (which I have done more times than I would like to admit) than the outcome may be too much to accept.  When I was younger I had the time to fix my screw-ups but as I get older, time is going by very quickly and I feel like I am always trying to beat the clock.  I try to look ahead for the next round in life and I’m not quite sure I have the chops for it.

I know whatever I choose I will survive but do I just want to survive or really live?  I’m trying to figure out what it is I am willing to commit to for the next stage because when my time comes for it all to be over I don’t want any regrets.

I vowed I would write a blog every week and that it would be published on  Thursday.   That would force me to have a schedule and take the time to sit down and write.  Once I start writing it flows.  It’s the sitting down that I have a hard time with each week.  I am on an intensive project right now which I have chosen to do so I feel the responsibility to give it my all.  But in doing so it has also given me permission to procrastinate in my personal life.  It  frustrates me because the procrastination has not allowed me to meet that deadline. But when I do get that brief time to catch my breath something  something says to me, “Enough.”  And I finally sit down and write.

The most profound thing happens when I do write.  My aha moments come rushing in and I don’t procrastinate on having those thoughts.  And so I know that with all the energy I put into my professional life I will also continue to put into my writing every week.  It will reassure me that even for a brief moment I will not be procrastinating  in what I want to do for the rest of my life.

Addiction.  Addiction.  Addiction.  What a loaded word.  It can account for so many meanings.  Drugs, alcohol, sex, food, spending, gambling, co-dependency, on and on and on.  It can destroy lives in an instant or over a long, pain staking life.  The intensity can only be measured by the person who is experiencing the addiction.  What ever happens in the mind to allow someone to go to that place, that bottomless abyss, is always up for discussion and analysis.

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I have always loved to teach. I have always loved school. If I could I would be enrolled in some sort of class full time. Something about a college campus makes me light up. The decorum is not necessarily fancy. Buildings of classrooms with desks. Some colleges are more elaborate than others but they seemed to be built to keep your eye on the ball.

A library is like church for me. The hushed tones of pages turning is quickly disappearing with the age of computers. But in a library there are still physical books and magazines that have a distinctive rustle. I don’t know why but I just feel safe from the outside world. I can travel to my location anywhere through those books.

Many lifelong friends and futures are built behind the walls of those classrooms and libraries. I was fortunate enough to teach university and loved every minute of it. It enabled me to constantly explore and learn to be able to be as crisp as possible for my students. And I acquired life long friends that I have seen blossom into amazing artists.

But I have to say that life has been my strongest teacher. In my youth I didn’t always heed the lessons that were being taught to me but thank goodness somehow the knowledge was stored in the back of my brain. Miraculously, out of nowhere, it still appears and saves the day. Even now, years later, I will question something and having no idea when or where I learned it, the information will come at just the right time.

My son has been an inspiration to me in my life. Who ever knows that you are doing the right thing when you are raising your child. I only have one child so I get one chance to try to do the best I can. Here I am floundering through my own life so don’t always make the best decisions for my son but I have always held him tightly in my heart and have done the best I know how. Most certainly can’t write books about child physiology but this I know. I have raised a young man who has taught me patience, kindness and dignity. He has had some rough patches along the way as we all have in our lives but he has definitely turned out the better for it.

So when I listen to him play jazz on his guitar I know regardless of how difficult his road will be he is following his passion and his heart. It’s life, his life, and when all is said and done, the journey is the best teacher.