"You know, it's amazing I can function at all."

"The sooner you treat your son as a man, the sooner he will be one." - John Dryden

As I've already shared in previous posts, my father has always had an amazing and somewhat neurotic work ethic. This is a man who could never go on vacation without a full set of tools. This is probably why we were trailer people and not hotel people. If we were pulling a trailer and living in something we owned, something that needed repairs and attention, instead of a hotel, there was always something for my dad to do.

His multiple jobs and minimal time at home when I was growing up were a part of the family's life. For a few years, we even stopped spending as much of our vacation time in Myrtle Beach, and spent summers in our trailer in a campground a little over an hour from our home in New Jersey. While we were there, my father would make the commute back to Glen Rock to go to work, driving back to the campground after his shifts were over.

My dad has never been the type to enjoy relaxation. He always told us that it was our fault he never got any rest and relaxation. We always talked about how much he would love to just be able to go fishing, but when he did get the time to do it, this was not a choice he was able to make. After his bypass surgery in 2001, a lot of things became much more difficult for him. He was unable to do his own lawn care, as well as many tasks around the house. This was extremely difficult for him. Since then, he has been gradually losing mobility. Now, he can barely walk more than 15 or 20 feet without sitting down, because his legs start to hurt or go numb.

"How many hopes and fears, how many ardent wishes and anxious apprehensions are twisted together in the threads that connect the parent with the child!" - Samuel Goodrich

As a child of the Depression, born during the summer of 1930, my father always told us that the reason he worked so hard and for so many hours, was so that we could have a better life, with more comforts than he had while growing up. My father's siblings have always shared this attitude, so my dad comes by it honestly. When I got my first teaching job, my uncle told me that since I didn't have a "real" job, I needed to spend all of my vacation time doing "honest work" like painting houses. My dad was the type who showed his life not by doing things with us, but by doing, or buying, things for us. We never had much money when I was growing up, and my parents racked up a considerable amount of credit card debt, but I never wanted for anything. I realize the sacrifices my parents made so that I had the things I wanted.

The truth is, I would have gladly sacrificed many of my "material comforts" for a little more time with my dad. I tried to have that conversation with my parents, but it was like an alien concept to them. When I told them that I didn't necessarily need the latest, hottest, greatest whatever, but I would rather spend time with them doing fun things, they would always tell me they didn't understand what else I wanted from them, since they bought me everything I ever wanted. Whenever the topic came up, I would invariably hear, "All that we do for you and it's never good enough." I tried to express the idea that I just wanted them to do something with me instead of for me, but they just never seemed to understand the difference. I'm fairly sure that this feeling is the reason, or at least a large part of the reason, why I'm such an attention hog. I always like to be the center of attention, and love people paying attention to me. Maybe that was one of the reasons why I became a teacher, that way if people ignored me, there would be consequences.

My wife has spent a large portion of our married life not working a "paying" job. She is a very talented person who could have held any number of jobs in her areas of expertise over the years, but with my intense work schedule and job responsibilities, she chose to do whatever she could to ensure that I was successful. She spent countless hours volunteering with my band programs, served as unpaid secretary, receptionist, and administrative assistant. She was my free graphic designer and consultant. She also spent a great deal of time keeping our house and finances in order, since my job and my ADD did not allow me to commit the time and attention needed to do all of those tasks. Still, she spent several years as a substitute teacher and reading tutor for adults with literacy issues when I taught near Charleston, SC. She somehow managed to do a great job with that and still do all of the other things she did. She didn't complain, she just did what needed to be done. Even if she didn't collect a pay check, she has always worked harder than most people I know.

With all that she did, when we would see my parents, or when they called, the conversation would somehow find its way around to "Just what does she do, anyway?" My father's basic assumption is that if someone doesn't have a "paying" job, then they must sit around the house doing nothing. If he called our house at 10 or 11 in the morning, and my wife didn't answer the phone, my dad would leave a message apologizing for calling when she was a asleep. Even on my rare days off, messages left sometimes as late as noon would sometimes include something like, "Well, you must be asleep."

When my parents found out that I had resigned from my job, they watched the days tick by before I found my new job. If I hadn't found one yet, it meant that I wasn't really looking for one. He would tell me, "You need to find a job, you know." As if I didn't. I know that, in his own way, he was looking out for me, but the constant reminder and the underlying assumption of laziness on my part was not appreciated.

On Sunday, a day I was off from work, I spoke to my father on the phone. He called and asked if I was driving home from work. I told him that I had the day off and he said, "What are you doing? Just sitting around the house doing nothing, I suppose." The understanding is that when you have a day off from work, you find another job... mow lawns, paint houses, whatever someone will pay you for. He asked for my work schedule, so I gave it to him. He didn't like that on Tuesday, I'm only scheduled to work about 5 hours. He saw that the days off on my schedule were Sunday and Friday. I told him I didn't know when my next day off after Friday will be. His reply? "It will be Sunday, you always get Sunday off." I've only been working for a week, but this is his way of saying that having Sunday off is bad because it would allow me to go to church, which he sees as a bad thing.

I got upset. He handed the phone to my mom and I told her I didn't appreciate his assumption that I am lazy. I heard him tell her he would never call me again. One of the reasons I changed careers was to have more time to spend with them and take care of them now that their health is failing. I don't want conflict now, but I don't want to be trampled either. I have spent enough of my life watching people walk all over me. I don't know what the resolution of this will be, but if you would excuse me, I have to work in the morning. That is, after all, what we were created to do.

"One day you'll turn around, and I'll be gone!" - Marie Barrone, Everybody Loves Raymond

"I'm gonna be a happy idiot and struggle for the legal tender..."

"Never continue in a job you don't enjoy. If you're happy in what you're doing, you'll like yourself, you'll have inner peace. And if you have that, along with physical health, you will have had more success than you could possibly have imagined." - Johnny Carson

There were a lot of things I loved about teaching. Being able to share my knowledge and wisdom, not just about music, but about life and success and growing up and a million other things, is an incredibly rewarding opportunity. By the time I left, there were just too many things about the job that were not only unsatisfying, but incredibly disheartening. The climate of the American public education system has changed a great deal in the past 15 years. The amount of misplaced accountability has skyrocketed. Society is amazingly critical of teachers. They are underpaid, overworked, and generally maligned for doing an extremely difficult job day after day with inadequate resources and uncooperative clients. Music teachers, in particular, are considered to be an even lower class of contributors to society. When I told people what I taught, their reply was invariably, "Oh, so you're not a real teacher." Even teacher look down on music teachers. The stress of the job is phenomenal, especially with the lack of a support system.

"Midway upon the journey of my life,
I found myself in a dark wood,
where the right way was lost."
- Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy

So it was that I left my career of 14 years as a high school music educator and spent some time wandering in Dante's woods. I rediscovered my dream of being a writer. This quote from my first post on this blog seemed so apt when I included then, and seems even more so now. I have no idea where this path will emerge from the woods, or even when. The trees press around me and make it seem as though I may never see the sun without the filter of their branches, for that is what a dark time in our life is like, seeing the sun through a filter of thick branches. I know that it still shines, for today I entered a bit of a clearing.

"Don't waste life in doubts and fears; spend yourself on the work before you, well assured that the right performance of this hour's duties will be the best preparation for the hours and ages that will follow it." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Today was the first day of work at my new job. This is not a career, mind you, it is but a way of keeping roof overhead and sustaining my physical self, so that my mental self has the freedom to create. I asked a few people when I first embarked on this journey if it was possible for a person's main occupation and their career to be two different things. Most people did not comprehend the possibility. Several firmly told me that it could not be so. I believed then, and still believe today, that it can be true. My career is "writer" but my job at this time is "retail media specialist."

"And I want to thank you for caring about my job, really." - Zack, Employee of the Month

I would like to thank all of my friends and readers who took the time to send me happy thoughts and positive vibes, all of those who said prayers on my behalf, all of those who truly cared about how I would fare in this transition, and still do. It is appreciated more than you know.

"You see, what we're actually trying to do here is, we're trying to get a feel for how people spend their day at work... so, if you would, would you walk us through a typical day, for you?" - Bob Slydell, Office Space

I started my work day at about 1:00 this afternoon by learning the finer points of the software and hardware used to complete transactions. The P.O.S. terminal (no, it means point of sale) is the central conduit for everything from clocking in and out to checking for release dates on the internet and ringing up purchases. When I last worked in retail back in the late 1980's, I was using a "simple" cash register (so simple that nobody else in the hardware store I was working in at the time really knew how to use most of its functions... I programmed it and taught everyone else how to use it). That bore only an ancestral resemblance to this computer terminal.

I look at it this way. When I was much younger, I was involved in music as a performer. I played music for the enjoyment of others. As I grew older, I became involved in music as a teacher. I taught people to play music for the enjoyment of others. Now, I am involved in music as a vendor. I sell people music that they can listen to for their enjoyment. It is really like a circle. We sell CD's, DVD's, some sheet music, and things like mp3, CD, and DVD players and such. I get to work directly with people who are looking for some entertainment to brighten their day. I get the chance to share my knowledge and excitement about music and movies with these people. I get to talk to them. I even got to talk about the Mets today to a guy who came in wearing a David Wright jersey. I have a direct impact on people almost every moment of the day, much like I did when teaching. The big difference is that if they don't like what I recommend, or the way in which I present it, I don't get called into my supervisor's office because mommy or daddy visited him to complain that I didn't explain the product well enough, or that I spent more time with some customers than with others. The difference in the level of responsibility was vast and liberating. If I screw up, it does not "destroy" lives (we know that sometimes teenagers lives are "destroyed" by the smallest things). I am not directly responsible for the fragile self-image of a hundred other people simultaneously. At this point in my life, that is refreshing.

I think it must be the ghost of Cory's suicide haunting me. That event, when a former student took his own life because he did not find the rest of the world as accepting as my band program, has changed my life forever. I can never escape the responsibility I felt and to some extent still feel. I don't blame myself. I know I could not have prevented it. I know I couldn't save everyone. I just couldn't let that happen again on my watch. I saved some people who were extremely close to taking the same steps to end their unhappiness and dissatisfaction with life, but it took its toll on me. Now I must be the student and learn to reconnect with myself. I must observe the variety of people who will come through my store each and every day and learn all I can from watching them and interacting with them. I will not have a direct impact, but I will affect them in small ways... and I will watch.

"Life is like a mop. Sometimes life gets full of dirt and crud and hairballs and things and you gotta clean it out. You gotta stick it in here and rinse it off and start all over again. And sometimes life sticks to the floor so much that a mop, a mop, it's not good enough. You gotta get down there with like a toothbrush, you know, and you gotta really scrub 'cause you gotta get it off. But if that doesn't work, you can't give up. You gotta stand right up. You gotta run to a window and say, 'These floors are dirty as hell, and I'm not gonna take it any more!'" - Stanley Spadowski, UHF

For now, I learn the routine. I learn the procedure, the system, the rules of the game. At times today, things just felt strange. I was never unhappy. I just felt out of place at times. I felt like this was a diversion, and eventually I would go back to my old life. I think that feeling is normal immediately after any big change. It's like when you take ice skates or catcher's gear off and you still feel as if you are wearing them for a while afterward. It's going to take time. I have to come to terms with my new reality.

I will say that at the end of the day, my younger co-worker was exhausted and couldn't wait for the time to pass until we could close the store and he could go relax. Both of my co-workers were astounded by my lack of a need to leave the sales floor and my constantly being able to straighten stock and engage with customers without seeming to tire. To be honest, I am physically tired. My legs are sore. The difference between this and how I felt at the end of a day of teaching was this. At the end of a day of marching band, I was physically and mentally drained. I had to make thousands of split second decisions every minute, affecting the well being of a hundred other people. I had to monitor the heat, check for clouds that may contain lightning, scan the kids for signs of heat exhaustion or dehydration, evaluated hundreds of points of reference for musical and physical (marching) performance at all times. I had to supervise, monitor and adjust, track behavior and progress, encourage and motivate, discipline and praise. I had to coordinate millions of variables mentally at all times simultaneously. Talk about multi-tasking! At the end of a day of concert or jazz band, I was physically fine, but mentally drained from all of those mental calculations. At the end of my work day today, I was mentally fresh, but physically tired.

For me, physical tiredness, aching in the muscles and such, takes much less of a toll on my well-being. Due to my old injuries and some chronic pain I deal with every day, I am used to letting physical pain roll off of me. I am sore, but I am not tired. I am physically strong, even without working out regularly (my students were always amazed by my physical strength and loved to challenge me to arm wrestling after concert clean-up was finished, thinking I would be worn-out from carrying heavy equipment and conducting for an hour... few ever beat me). I can handle this. I am sure that there will be mentally taxing days. I know that I will come home frazzled at times, but so far I feel that I am in a good place, where my talents in working with others will be maximized, my knowledge of movies and music will be utilized, and my wisdom and experience will grow and develop. My dream is to be a writer. I write the human experience.

"The work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives and the dreams shall never die." - Edward Kennedy

It is my turn to be the student. The entire world is my teacher. There are so many different kinds of people in this world and, being in the heart of a tourist "mecca," our store sees visitors from all parts of it.

Welcome to my store. What kinds of music are you looking for? What types of movies do you like? I will be there, at your service, every day that I am called to be. Just know that I am watching... and learning.

"I'm going to pack my lunch in the morning
And go to work each day
And when the evening rolls around
I'll go on home and lay my body down
And when the morning light comes streaming in
I'll get up and do it again."
- Jackson Browne, The Pretender

"I'm doin' it for old time's sake..."

(title quote: Beach Boys, Somewhere Near Japan)

"Running down around the towns along the shore
When I was sixteen and on my own
No, I couldn't tell you what the hell those brakes were for
I was just trying to hear my song."
- Jackson Browne, Barricades of Heaven

My brother graduated from high school in June of 1980, right around the time my father was eligible for retirement after serving 25 years with the Glen Rock police department. Ever since my parents were newlyweds, their dream had been to move south. Shortly after they fell in love with each other, they fell in love with Myrtle Beach. They drove south any opportunity they could get. They never came on an airplane. My father vowed never to fly again after an airplane he was on during his time with the army lost an engine in the air. They always drove.

For a few years we stopped coming to Myrtle Beach so often. We stopped spending large chunks of our summers and every week that school was out on vacation in the land of the palmetto tree. I didn't realize at the time that my parents were saving money for the move. Saving money was something they didn't do often. My dad has always been the type who loves instant gratification. At least I come by it honestly.

“My life is like a stroll on the beach... as near to the edge as I can go.” - Henry David Thoreau

After attending my brother's high school graduation and my father's retirement ceremony, we were soon to embark for South Carolina on a more permanent basis. My father drove down ahead of us, with my grandmother, in his conversion van that he and a few friends had spent months building out of an old appliance delivery van my dad was given in exchange for helping with deliveries during the past 20 years. They converted it in the warehouse of the grocery store where my father worked when he wasn't wearing blue. Now it was to serve as his RV while he found us a place to live. My grandmother went along as my mom's agent in the location of lodging for us, so that my mother could be sure that any place my dad purchased would be fit for us to live in. My dad can be an impulsive man, and he was determined to buy a house of some kind during his single week of advance scouting. We just wanted to make sure it had a sturdy roof and walls and a floor that wasn't dirt. My dad had joked about us moving into an old, abandoned ramshackle farm house falling into the weeds because the price would be right. Mom was afraid that he was serious, so she sent her mother with him.

My dad found a house, a mobile home actually, and soon after his retirement and Scott's graduation were behind us, we made the land of our dream beach vacations our year-round home.

"But if you left it up to me
Everyday would be
A holiday from real
We'd waste our weeks
Beneath the sun
We'd fry our brains
And say it's so much fun out here
But when it's all over
I'll come back for another year."
- Jack’s Mannequin, Holiday From Real

This is how I became a "Damn Yankee." When I entered school, I quickly found out that fat, nerdy kids from "up north" were not all that welcome in the South. It was, and in some quarters still is, a "true fact" that the South was gonna rise again and throw off the yoke of Northern oppression once and for all. The war was still being fought in the playgrounds and schools, in the streets and at the bus stops. Needless to say, I got picked on a lot.

Soon after our arrival, I discovered something that was to be my escape from the harsh realities of my existence for many years. To some extent, it still is. Soon after we moved, I discovered Dungeons & Dragons. Some of my sixth grade classmates were trying to learn how to play the game and nobody could understand the rules, so they gave me the books and asked me to read them and teach them the rules, then serve as Dungeon Master. Ah, the benefits of being the nerdy kid in class. I was so used to being picked on that I declined at first, thinking D&D was some new version of "snipe hunting" or some other trick they were trying to play on me. They finally convinced me that it was no joke, they just didn't know what half of the words in those books meant.

As time passed and I grew older, I began to discover my surroundings in this place I now called home. It wasn't long before we realized that living in the town where we had passed so many dream vacations, and as I related yesterday some of those dreams were nightmares as well, didn't necessarily mean that we would be on a year-round vacation. My dad soon began to work full time, since living in a resort town, while cheaper than living in New Jersey, was a bit more expensive than he had originally thought. My parents didn't' own a house in New Jersey, and they didn't have any kind of "nest egg" from which to draw. My brother's college tuition also became a financially drain since he wasn't able to hold a job for any length of time. When he dropped out of college, the tuition bills were still there and they were soon added to the medical bills for the care of his bi-polar disorder.

As a teenager, I discovered the benefits of living in a resort town. There always seemed to be something to do. While I continued to play D&D, I got a job as a pool attendant/life guard at our neighborhood pool, eventually bought my first car, a '79 Mercury Cougar with a LOT of horses under the hood, and broadened my horizons while using the car to explore my surroundings. There have always been a number of songs that, while they were written about other places, places far away like California and New Jersey, have always captured the essence of what is was like to grow up in Myrtle Beach.

"We stand up in the Palace like it's the last of the great pioneer town bars
We shout out these songs against the clang of electric guitars
You can see a million miles tonight
But you can't get very far."
- Counting Crows, Mrs. Potter's Lullaby

"Beyond the Palace hemi-powered drones scream down the boulevard
The girls comb their hair in rear view mirrors
And the boys try to look so hard..."

"The amusement park rises bold and stark..."

"Kids are huddled on the beach in a mist."
- Bruce Springsteen, Born To Run

I spent my teen years in Myrtle Beach driving way too fast in a car with an engine that was way too big. It didn't take me long to figure out that my Cougar could win drag races. Though I was never one for thrill rides, even when we vacationed in Myrtle Beach, we used to go to The Pavilion Amusement Park, which is gone now. I was horribly embarrassed once when my mother dropped a bag of fudge on the haunted house and forced them to shut the ride down, turn on the house lights, and find her fudge! As for the beach, I learned that once it started to get dark, the tourists would pack up their things and head for their hotels to shower and change clothes to go eat in the local seafood restaurants in Murrells Inlet. Once they left the beach, the locals took over. I spent many nights on the beach with friends until long after the sun had faded and darkness had covered the surf and sand. As for The Palace, it was built too late for me to enjoy much of its short heyday, but I did get the chance to see STYX in concert there. I actually made it onto the stage and sat on its edge while James Young gave me repeated high-fives.

"The ghosts of the tilt-a-whirl will linger inside of your head..."

"And the ferris wheel junkies will spin there forever instead."
- Counting Crows, Mrs. Potter's Lullaby

When I was in college, my roommate came to Myrtle Beach during the summer with his church youth group. They went to The Pavilion and were enjoying the rides when something unexpected happened. He had just gotten off the ferris wheel when he heard screaming and a commotion. Turning around, the discovered that several people had fallen from the ride. A teenage boy was killed and two girls were injured when they fell from the car, which they were rocking at the time of the accident. When I was in the seventh grade, an eight grade girl that I vaguely knew from school was killed while riding the "Black Witch" roller coaster at the Magic Harbor Amusement Park. I spent much more time at Magic Harbor while growing up here than I ever did at The Pavilion, but after several high profile deaths, the park was razed. The grounds are now considered haunted.

“You know I gotta get out
But I'm stuck so tight
Weighed by the chains that keep me...
Hangin' around this town on the corner
I been bummin' around this old town too long
I been hangin' around this town on the corner
I been bummin' around this old town for way too long.”
- Counting Crows, Hangin’ Around

One of my favorite "haunts" during my teen years was the corner of Atlantic Avenue and Waccamaw Drive. Though the area was destroyed by Hurricane Hugo in 1989 (the storm surge reached the level of the yellow awning on the left - I'm planning a Hugo photo post in a month or so with many of the photos I took right after that storm), it was rebuilt fairly close to what it looked like during my teen years. The 24 hour diner at Sam's Corner has been serving its "World Famous Hot Dogs" since 1957. This corner is still a favorite hangout for locals teens and tourists. Recent visits have proven that I still "have it" (whatever "it" is) on the air hockey tables and skee ball machines in The Pavilion Arcade. My first job was about 300 yards from this corner, selling "Hawaiian Shave Ice" from a little wooden shack. Also, while I was in college, my favorite surfing spot was about 100 yards south of this intersection, and I could often be found there as early as 5 a.m. trying to catch a few waves before I went to work at Village Hardware.

"Down on the boulevard they take it hard
They look at life with such disregard
They say it can't be won
The way the game is run
But if you choose to stay You end up playing anyway
It's okay...

The hearts are hard and the times are tough
Down on the boulevard the night's enough
And time passes slow
Between the storefront shadows and the street lights glow
Everybody walks right by like they're safe or something
They don't know..."

- Jackson Browne, Boulevard

My post from last night, about my traumatic head injury at age three, really got me thinking about a lot of my memories. Memories, for me, are often tied together by fragmented images, sounds, and smells, and are often associated with some of my favorite songs. After I went to my new place of employment to fill out necessary paperwork and pick up a shirt for work tomorrow (I will let you all know how things went when I get home around 11 p.m. Eastern Time), I went on a little photo safari, armed with my memories, my camera, and my ipod. This post is the result of that. It's disjointed and fragmentary, much like my memories. I'm sure I will be sharing more of those memories of more specific events and places in the future.

"We can give thanks for our health and happiness, the support we receive from our families and friends, some wonderful memories and the excitement that each new day brings." - Queen Elizabeth II

I spoke to my former color guard instructor this evening. She is overwhelmed with the responsibilities the new director is loading onto her shoulders and despairing that she will be able to handle them all, along with college, and working as a waitress at her father's restaurant. I told her that I knew she could do it. More people are starting to learn of my career change, and I've had several somewhat awkward conversations with people over the past few days. It's still difficult to answer when they ask what career I'm pursuing now, because I don't consider retail my career and I haven't earned any money from writing yet. Isn't that a prerequisite for calling it a career?

When I spoke to the manager that will begin training me tomorrow, he told me that he will be calling the other manager tomorrow to set up an interview for the management training. I hope that works out, because once I am trained, the store I where I hope to become assistant manager is much closer to my house, and the pay would be much more suitable to financial survival.

Thank you, faithful readers, for your support and encouragement. You have all made the journey of this summer so much easier for me than it could have been. You have allowed me to write, to change, to grow, to revisit the days of my youth, and now, to see the ocean again as I did when I first became a "Damn Yankee" (someone who moves from the Northern U.S. to the Southern U.S. and stays south of the Mason-Dixon Line). May we have many more journeys together.

"It's been so long since I've seen the ocean... I guess I should…" - Counting Crows, A Long December

"I keep thinking tomorrow is coming today..."

“The great thing in the world is not so much where we stand, as in what direction we are moving." - Oliver Wendell Holmes

It has been an interesting week, for me at least. As a band director, while most teachers got a little over two months of time off during the summer, I only got a single month off. As I have said, that month was almost always spent preparing for the coming school year and marching band season. We were lucky if we could sneak away somewhere for two weeks, or if I could find an interesting place to take the 6 graduate credit hours I was required to take every 5 years for recertification. A few years ago, I took a course at VanderCook College of Music at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago. That was a LOT of fun. While everybody else in the class was paying way too much to live in the dorms, I took a chance on Priceline and was staying at the Palmer House Hilton for only $50 a night. However, since I was in class most of the time I was in Chicago, I didn't get to see much of the city on that trip. At least it was an escape from routine.

This summer, since I basically knew I would not be returning to my teaching job fairly early in the summer (late June), I didn't take the graduate credits I was planning on taking. I didn't spend countless hours in preparation for the upcoming marching band season or school year. I took the month of vacation and took a chance to breathe. I took the time to come to terms with myself, or at least begin to do so. I began to write. I started on the long journey towards self.

I didn't really expect to feel too much emotion when the day I was supposed to start working again rolled around, but I was apparently wrong. I had thought that since I made this decision and I had come to terms with it, that I would be okay when that day came upon me. That day was this past Monday. I was wrong.

"Take some time before you go
Think of Monday's coming down
And the people that you knew
The ones that aren't around..."
- Counting Crows, If I Could Give All My Love (Richard Manuel Is Dead)

I started to notice the tension inside of my... soul, for lack of a better word, on Sunday evening. Things were getting under my skin. It was not a good day. When Monday came down I realized that something was seriously wrong. I was not surrounded by my students.

For the past thirteen years, the last Monday in July has been the day that the entire band returns for the beginning of full day camp. It signalled the beginning of two solid weeks of intense rehearsals beginning at 8 a.m. and, in recent years, going until 4 p.m. Two of the busiest weeks of the year for me for so long and now, this day that in years past I had prepared so meticulously for had dawned empty and grey. Any other year, music had to be prepared to be handed out when they arrived, nearly a hundred eager faces, along with permissions slips, handbooks that outlined all of the band's procedures and policies, fundraising packets for one of the year's biggest fund raising events. This year, if those things happened, they would be happening without me.

I didn't think it would hit me.

It dropped me.

By Monday afternoon, I had a serious meltdown. I didn't even see it coming. I kept thinking that I was okay with everything, but I was just avoiding the emotion. It was still there, buried deep inside, white hot. This year had just become profoundly different from the more than a dozen that had preceded it.

"So I put my head on the ground
And the sky is a wheel
Spinning these days into things that I’ve lost
But you can keep all the years."
- Counting Crows, Goodnight L.A.

Over the course of the week, I received little reminders that things had irrevocably changed. I received the notice that my insurance coverage had expired. I received a note about my pay scale rate. Then, the car decided to exact its revenge. It was a reminder of the car we were about to buy about a week before I started thinking that I might want to leave my job. I really wanted that car, but not enough to stay unhappy in my job, with my life. Some things are more important than money. That's just not so easy to remember when it's 4:30 in the morning and you can't find sleep because you're worried about where the money is going to come from.

"Its 4:30 a.m. on a Tuesday
It doesn't get much worse than this
In beds in little rooms in buildings in the middle of these lives which are completely meaningless."
- Counting Crows, Perfect Blue Buildings

We do what we must to survive. My students always picked up on the fact that I was funniest when I was under pressure. They loved to sit near me on bus rides to competitions, because the closer we got to the nail-biting pressure of the performance, the more my wry sense of humor would come through. The result this week was this post. If humor is how I cope, then I think things aren't too bad. Towards the end of my career, particularly the last year, I had lost that sense of humor. I relished any opportunity that I saw a spark of it. I'm happy to have it back.

"But i don’t mind the days
Gone rolling away
Cause all this sunlight feels warm on my face today."
- Counting Crows, Goodnight L.A.

Walking on the boardwalk out on the inlet yesterday was nice. Even though it was sunny and hot. I realized that it felt nice just to be. Here it was, the week of the last Monday in July and I wasn't running around going crazy with stress, putting in a bunch of 18 hour work days in the heat, standing on a tall metal ladder in the sun for a lot of those hours, baking in the sun. Last year's camp felt strange to me, but I didn't realize why at the time. I think time was winding down and I didn't even know it.

This morning, I took the car to the shop. The auto infirmary. The place where they cast out the demons and make things whole again. When I spoke to the mechanic this afternoon, the news was good, but tempered. The alternator was okay. It was a battery problem. Now, my car is a sports car. The mechanic called it a "little hod rod with an engine that's really too big for it." It needs a special battery apparently. I never knew that. The last one I put in was the standard for the normal production version of the car. That explains why it wore out so quickly. The "sport" version has extra bells and whistles that require more power. The repair cost half what it would have cost to replace the alternator. However, there is a seal leaking where the driveshaft enters the engine. This would be a major repair... over a thousand dollars. The car is 8 years old and has almost two hundred thousand miles on it. I was advised to sell it before that problem becomes more than the minor nuisance it is currently. I have reliable transportation for now, but inside, there is a time bomb.

Yesterday afternoon I received a call from one of the retail stores where I submitted an online application. They wanted me to come in for an interview today. The store is about 35 minutes from my house, driving on the local version of the Autobahn, a largely undiscovered road used only by locals in a hurry to get somewhere. It is all prepared to be interstate highway when the project gets funded and reaches this far, but for now it is a mostly unknown way to bypass all of the tourist traffic. The average speed of traffic is about 80 m.p.h. I love that road.

The interview went very well. The manager of this retail music store was brought in to turn around a store that had suffered years of mismanagement. He said he only wants to bring in staff with a strong knowledge of music and movies. He wants intelligent people who are hard workers and know how to interact with others. We got along great. He basically told me that the job was mine for the taking. Even though I know I can do this, some part of me is still scared to do anything except what I've spent the last 14 years doing. I told him I had to be able to meet my expenses. He is calling his district manager tomorrow and calling to make me an offer. As long as it is reasonable, I will take it. For the first 60 days, I would be allowed to quit without notice if I found another job, and not have it count against me. I'm still waiting to hear from the game store that is looking for a manager-in-training. That would pay much more. This will pay more than what I'm making now. It's all about taking steps.

"Every day you may make progress. Every step may be fruitful. Yet there will stretch out before you an ever-lengthening, ever-ascending, ever-improving path. You know you will never get to the end of the journey. But this, so far from discouraging, only adds to the joy and glory of the climb." - Winston Churchill

Now, I'm not usually into the whole meme scene. I don't even know how to pronounce it. But if it is something that is interesting, promotes fellow bloggers, or helps the blogging community, then I will participate. The "Face Behind the Blog" was interesting. I wasn't sure how much anonymity I would want to keep, but now that I am not pressured by an employer and the band parents to not have a web presence (that's right, I my principal received complaints because I had a website, an AIM screen name, played online games, etc. so I didn't feel I could blog unless I had total anonymity, and the one time I tried, even with total anonymity and my identity acknowledge nowhere, I had to shut it down), I feel more liberated to allow myself to be myself. This time, I would like to participate in a tag from HollyGL that I think is helpful to other bloggers. Allow me to present this installment of...

Blogging Tips

It’s very simple. When this is passed on to you, copy the whole thing, check out the blogs on the list and put a * star beside those that you like. Add the next number (1. 2. 3. 4. 5., etc.) and write your own blogging tip for other bloggers. Try to make your tip general. After that, tag 10 other people. Link love some friends! Just think– if 10 people start this, the 10 people pass it onto another 10 people, you have 100 links already! Here are the tips:

1. Look, read, and learn.http://www.neonscent.com/*****

2. Be EXCELLENT to each other.http://www.bushmackel.com/*****

3. Don’t let money change ya!http://www.therandomforest.info/*****

4. Always reply to your commentshttp://chattiekat.com/***

5. Blog about what you know & love.http://sugar-queens-dream.blogspot.com/****

6. Don't use filthy language-buy a dictionary.http://shinade.blogspot.com/*

7. Whenever possible, spread some positive thoughts and love. The world needs more of them.http://ailema4ever.blogspot.com/****

8. Write down from your heart or head. Either way asks yourself why you ever get started.http://chocmintgirl.blogspot.com/**

9. Try to make your template something unique and easy to look. Your template gives the blogger identity as much as the post content.http://psychosomaticwit.blogspot.com/**

10. Take risks creatively with your writing. You'd be surprised how little it takes to bring out the poet or novelist in you.http://remedialrumination.blogspot.com/*

11. Find your own voice! Your writing should reflect your unique personality. Don't ever try to be something you're really not just because you think you have to in order to get people to read your blog. http://gazing-into-the-abyss.blogspot.com/

--End Copy--

I know the instructions say to tag 10 people, but since I've only been doing this for less than 2 months, I'm going to pick 5 (hey, Holly did it too). If you would rather not participate, that's okay too.

Jod(i) at Beyond the Cracked Window
Dan from Cafe Leone
Bobby Revell of Revellian
Amanda from This Side of Reason
Rhea at The Boomer Chronicles

"Out there in the shadow of the modern machine
Walks St. Robinson in his Cadillac dream."
- Counting Crows, St. Robinson In His Cadillac Dream

"Anything worth doing is difficult."

"If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause and say, here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well." - Martin Luther King, Jr.

When we first moved to this area eight years ago, we happened to discover a restaurant that featured an "all-you-can-eat" pizza buffet. The pizza wasn't the best I have ever had, and the selection of choices was about average as well, but the price was right, so we sat down and began to eat way too much pizza.

At some point during the meal, we began to hear the normal clatter of plates, cups and silverware as a nearby table was being cleared. To our surprise, the familiar sounds of a table being cleared are soon accompanied by singing. we turned around to see where the singing was coming from, and were astonished to see that the man clearing the table was doing so at near light speed. I have never seen anyone work so quickly at busing a table. He was fast and efficient. Most interestingly, he was also smiling broadly and on occasion, would spontaneously burst into song. The songs he sang were all songs of joy and happiness. When he found a tip on a table, he would immediately start singing some song that reflected his thankfulness at receiving this gratuity. He would also sometimes make eye contact with one or more diners and begin singing a song to the customer(s) he was focusing on. He was amazing. We continued to visit that restaurant for several more years, even after it moved into a large new location. The highlight of every visit, for us, was watching this man joyfully do a job that most people despise. I worked at an all-you-can-eat buffet restaurant for a grand total of three days in high school. I was a busboy. It was not a fun job. Yet, here was this man, who looked to be in his thirties, doing this job like it was the most fun he could possibly have.

"Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Throughout the course of my life, whenever I have seen a person doing an ordinary job in an extraordinary way, I have always taken note. My own father was an example of this. When he was working at the grocery store behind our house, he was not only friendly with customers, he became friends with the customers. He always had a smile, kind words, and a laugh for every person he encountered. When he walked his beat as a cop, he would bend down or take a knee to talk to children. He got to know all of the shop owners in our small downtown area and often did odd jobs for them on his days off. He helped the appliance store owner by delivering appliances. He repaired brass instruments for the owner of the music store. He worked the counter when the cobbler needed help. My father, who only became a police officer on a dare, did his job with enthusiasm and joy. His desire to help others led him to pick up a hitchhiker once during his shift on the police force. He asked this young man where he was going, and when the destination was in the next town, my father happily drove the man to that town and dropped him off. They enjoyed pleasant conversation during the course of the ride, and my father wished him well and drove back to our town. On his way back into town, during which he was well outside of the limits of his patrol area, he received a call about a store having been robbed, along with a description of the thief. That suspect was the man my father had just driven out of town and dropped off.

"Mister Tanner was a cleaner from a town in the Midwest.

And of all the cleaning shops around he'd made his the best.

But he also was a baritone who sang while hanging clothes.

He practiced scales while pressing tails and sang at local shows.

His friends and neighbors praised the voice that poured out from his throat.

They said that he should use his gift instead of cleaning coats."

- Harry Chapin, Mr. Tanner

During the early days of my teaching career, when we lived just outside of Charleston, we regularly shopped at a grocery store in which one of the butchers would regularly set up his cutting table out in the store itself instead of back in the normal room behind large windows where butchers would normally work. Then, he would begin working... and singing. This "singing butcher" would sing loudly for long periods of time while he worked, often drawing quite a crowd. He was always happy and enthusiastic. Here was another example of a person doing this ordinary job in a way that most people would never dream of doing it.

"But music was his life, it was not his livelihood,
and it made him feel so happy and it made him feel so good.
And he sang from his heart and he sang from his soul.
He did not know how well he sang; It just made him whole."
- Harry Chapin, Mr. Tanner

As I mentioned in a previous post, a few years ago we focused on the example of Seattle's Pike Place Fish Market in an in-service employee training seminar at work. We learned the four Fish! principles (Be There, Play, Make Their Day and Choose Your Attitude™), watched video of the employees at the market, and participated in a number of exercises and breakout sessions relating to this method of being exceptional at whatever you do.




Did everyone suddenly rush out and start singing as they performed their everyday tasks? Did everyone immediately start doing their jobs with enthusiasm? Of course not. Why? I believe there are several reasons. First, people are resistant to change. We have a tendency to continue doing whatever it is we are doing in exactly the same way we have always done it. To do anything different would be frightening to most of us. Second, many people have a lack of motivation to change. They don't believe that if they begin behaving in a certain way that they will start having fun at work. They don't see any reason to change, since the present system works adequately well.

The main reason, in my opinion, that most people tend to resist changes such as these is that, in combination with the above factors, we tend to behave the way we do because it is most in line with our personality. An introverted person will not suddenly become a gregarious example of extroversion just because of a few motivational sessions and videos at work. It just doesn't happen. Our personality is an outgrowth of not only the interior factors of our own personal tendencies and genetic make-up, it is also determined by our experiences through time. An individual can successfully modify their own personality, if they TRULY want to (or are otherwise sufficiently motivated), with great effort, over a period of time. Abrupt behavioral modifications are just not common and even gradual changes require great effort and desire.

"As simple as it sounds, we all must try to be the best person we can: by making the best choices, by making the most of the talents we've been given." - Mary Lou Retton

If it is so difficult and unlikely to affect this change, then why am I prattling on about it? Well, if one person were to read this and experiment, even for just one day, with conducting themselves at work, or just out in public, like at a restaurant next time you go out to eat, it would make the world a little bit more fun.

"We start out so open and spontaneous. We're real individuals. Then somewhere along the way we're drawn to conform." - Patch Adams

One of the best examples of this attitude in film, is Robin Williams' character in the movie Patch Adams. This character, who is based on a real person, was actually cited in his medical school files as suffering from "excessive happiness." I watched this film once again this morning and realized that a lot of the arguments that Dr. Walcott uses against "Patch" have been used against me. Walcott sees "Patch" as a threat because he approaches every day with enthusiasm and compassion. He genuinely loves people, and he loves helping them.

I was moved almost to tears during the scenes when Walcott tries to keep him from graduating and becoming a doctor. I had heard many of those same points recently used as criticism towards me.

"Because what you want is for us to get down there on the same level as our patients... to destroy objectivity... You don't fit in. There are standards and codes."
- Dr. Walcott, Patch Adams

When "Patch" is speaking at the hearing where the board is making the determination of whether or not he will be allowed to graduate, he defends his approach to medicine, and life, and his words echo my feelings.

"Now, I've sat in your schools and heard people lecture on transference... and professional distance. Transference is inevitable, sir. Every human being has an impact on another." - Patch Adams

Once again, when he is being addressed by the board, the words are eerily similar to things I have recently heard, as recently as the day I resigned.

"We find your methods less than appealing. along with your crass and disdainful behavior... you carry with you a flame..."

While my flame for being a professional educator may have been extinguished, my flame for life has not. I still love interacting with people. In my leadership seminars, I have always encouraged the prospective leaders to be exceptional in everything they do. I have told them about the busboy at the pizza place and the singing butcher. I have even told them stories of my father.

This past spring, I had another example to share with them. I went to the local theater a few months ago, and when I approached the concessions counter for some extremely overpriced soda and popcorn, because it's not a "real" movie experience without that stuff, I was waited on by a man named Don. I always try to speak to people who are wearing name tags using their name. I mean, otherwise why wear the tag, right? Don made working at a movie theater concession stand into a work of art. He was friendly and began establishing a rapport with me right away. We bantered back and forth. He commented on my Pink Floyd t-shirt (I get a lot of comments on that shirt). We joked about all sorts of things. I was almost late getting into the movie. Don made me happy to have to almost take out a second mortgage and arrange a payment plan for a soft drink and a bucket of popcorn.

“Enthusiasm is the leaping lightning, not to be measured by the horse-power of the understanding." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

The following week, I told the story of my encounter with Don during one of my leadership seminars. That afternoon, two of the students from my leadership seminar immediately drove directly to the theater, about 15 minutes away, to buy some overpriced concessions and meet Don. They weren't there to see a movie. They didn't even buy tickets to see a movie later in the week (which you can do now). They went simply to meet Don and experience his enthusiasm. He did not let them down. That afternoon, to promote a movie (which will go unnamed here), Don was dressed as a pirate. When they approached him, he immediately launched into a routine about looking for his lost parrot, speaking in the "pirate voice" the entire time (AAAAARRRRRRRR!!!!)

“The secret of genius is to carry the spirit of the child into old age, which means never losing your enthusiasm.” - Aldous Huxley

People like Don, and the others mentioned above, make life so much more fun. They bring joy into the lives of others in small, unexpected ways. Why not try it? Pick an opportunity and make someone's day. Have fun with them. Give them the opportunity to play. Provoke a smile and give them one of yours. Make a game out of it. It's like a little civil disobedience that can't get you into trouble (in most circumstances). Go for it, just once. What do you have to lose?

“Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves.” – Henry David Thoreau

"In my life I find that memories of the spirit linger and sweeten long after memories of the brain have faded."

Welcome back! I've been remodeling. As you can see, I've moved things around a bit, freshened things up, opened some windows and let some light into this place. Hopefully, it will be a bit easier on your tired eyes. I know... it even looks bigger in here. It's amazing when you choose the right color scheme how much brighter a place can look.

"Some of them were dreamers
And some of them were fools
Who were making plans and thinking of the future
With the energy of the innocent
They were gathering the tools..."
- Jackson Browne, Before the Deluge

Back in the summer of 1993, the world seemed so much simpler, for me at least. I was only a few months out of college and had gotten married at the beginning of the previous summer. We had been living in subsidized housing with jobs that paid only a pittance. My wife and I both spent the spring after my December graduation working for our college's education department. She was a secretary and I was an interviewer for the accreditation study that we were conducting. I also taught private clarinet lessons (clarinet was NOT my principal instrument and I barely considered myself proficient on it, but I have always had success teaching others how to play it well) and played in a rock band (Slightly Used), which cost a lot more than it paid, I promise.

As I've related previously, after much interviewing, wailing and gnashing of teeth, I secured a job most of the way across the state in a place neither of us had either lived previously. Also, neither of us had ever lived in a place so rural. Sure, my wife's family on her father's side had grown up in the country, as farmers, but we were both children of the suburbs.

"Let me tell y'all what it's like
Being male, middle-class and white."
- Ben Folds, Rockin' the Suburbs

We soon found ourselves living in a small town in the middle of a rural area. The school where I was going to be teaching was in a part of the county about 15 miles north with extremely high poverty and few other white faces. In the tiny town where the school was located, the white people that could, sent their children across the attendance lines to a predominantly white school in the next town, or to private school. I have never considered myself prejudiced, but I had never been seen as a minority before. The school was functioning under a recent court order to desegregate... in the 1990's... in America. They were under a requirement to hire a certain percentage of white teachers and staff and curb the problem of students crossing attendance lines. The school was short on funds and the building was in terrible shape, having once been the town's "colored" school in the days of "separate but equal" in which separate seemed to still be the case, while equal definitely wasn't.

When I moved into the band room, I noticed that the carpet was lime green shag. It was in a building all by itself at the rear of the campus, with no windows and, for most of my three years there, no air conditioning. It was like working, living, in a brick oven. We had no band uniforms. There hadn't been more than a half-dozen students in the band program for the past four years. The "music" they made on that first day made the inaugural notes of Mr. Holland's band sound like a symphony of angels.

"Playing music is supposed to be fun. It's about heart, it's about feelings, moving people, and something beautiful, and it's not about notes on a page." - Glenn Holland, Mr. Holland's Opus

When I received my class rosters a few days before the school year started, I couldn't believe my eyes. I would be teaching two middle school band classes and a high school band class. I would also be responsible for teaching the middle school band students physical education. The thing that astounded me was that the classes were nearly empty. They really weren't kidding. I had never done this before and I was going to be responsible for making the numbers grow from the six students on my class rosters to a musical ensemble that could give a Christmas concert for the student body in... what? Only about five months. Before that however, I was supposed to start putting together a marching band to perform in the stands at football games (thankfully, I would not be required to give halftime performances that school year... no field show). I had work to do.

“There's a time when a man needs to fight and a time when he needs to accept that his destiny's lost, the ship has sailed and that only a fool will continue. The truth is I've always been a fool.” – Ed Bloom, Big Fish

I started by looking at only a small group of select sixth grade students to be considered for admission into the seventh grade band class as beginners. No recruiting had been done, and it was not an easy task, since being in the band had an even worse, by far, stigma at this school than it does at most schools. I managed to recruit two sixth graders, one on trumpet and one on saxophone. Since the program was so small, my performances would have to combine all students of all ability levels, from these raw beginners, up to the more experienced high school students. While I was recruiting these sixth graders, I also began combing the classrooms of both the middle school and the high school, looking for students who had dropped out of band, or had been members of the band at a previous school. I managed to find a number of these students and convince some of them to join my band. I lured them into an open house in the band room with an instrument repair technician, since many of their instruments hadn't been played in years, and most were handed down... what the technician called M'uncle horns ("Son, where'd you get that horn?" "M'uncle played it."), and most importantly, my open house featured something no self-respecting teen or pre-teen could turn down... free food.

Soon, my band had grown to over thirty mostly warm bodies, including the high school principal's son, a member of the varsity football team, two cheerleaders, and a talented tuba player who had transferred in from another school. It was time for my first marching band practice. I rounded them up on the football field and began showing them proper marching techniques, just like I had been taught when I was in high school. They stared. They started laughing. The tuba player was helping me demonstrate. The principal's son was trying to get his fellow students to give it a try. It wasn't working. In less than thirty minutes, the "rehearsal" turned into a rout. Only a few students were still present. The rest marched straight to the principal's office demanding that this "crazy white man" be fired and replaced with a proper "black" band director. He left no uncertainty when he told them that the next practice I held, they had better be there doing exactly as I told them to do.

I was young, persistent, resilient. As Paul, the school's softball coach and as time passed, one of my closest friends during those years, soon taught me, "Not everyone's gonna want what you have to offer." He also taught me that "life sucks, grab a helmet."

I begged. I cajoled. I struggled. I gave every ounce of everything I had to get that program started. The principal got a former band director friend of his to put together an alumni band to "drum up" (pun intended) community support for the band program. I contacted the city newspaper in the nearest large city of Charleston and got a reporter to make the drive up to the school, about an hour away, to see the band rehearse. I chose an indoor music rehearsal, and the only song they knew how to play, "Under the Sea" from Disney's The Little Mermaid. My sense of humor and my rapport with the students quickly captured the reporter's attention. Since that ill-fated practice, we had begun to bond and work towards a common goal. One of my favorite quotes from that article was when I stopped the rehearsal for a moment, wiped my brow and said, "We need saxophones." One of my trumpet players quickly retorted, "We need Jesus!"

"Now let the music keep our spirits high
And let the buildings keep our children dry
Let creation reveal its secrets by and by
When the light that's lost within us reaches the sky."
- Jackson Browne, Before the Deluge

Not too far into the football season, we had a band that could perform a few simple tunes in the bleachers during football games. I bought used uniforms from a school halfway across the state and drove the school's battered activity van all the way there to pick them up. My wife carefully ironed patches over the other school's name on every single uniform. We both worked incredibly hard. By the afternoon of the homecoming game, I passed out on the floor of my office's private restroom. The hours were grueling. We gave everything. We developed pride... and discipline.

In late October I took the band on a long bus ride to the Lower State Marching Championships, the equivalent of a semi-final round, for high schools our size. I told them before we got off the bus that we were there to watch and learn. I looked around that bus and told them that we would be returning the following year... to compete. As they watched the bands march across the field, they were incredulous. Most of them had never been to a marching band competition before. They couldn't believe what they were seeing. They couldn't believe that these bands were using the same fundamentals, the same marching style I had been teaching them, and were putting together these amazing productions, almost theatrical. They couldn't believe the pageantry and discipline on display. As we boarded the bus for the long drive home that night, several students told me that there was no way we would be ready to do that in only a year.

"A teacher has two jobs; fill young minds with knowledge, yes, but more important, give those minds a compass so that that knowledge doesn't go to waste." - Principal Jacobs, Mr. Holland's Opus

As a matter of fact, that next week, one of my talented clarinet players, also a cheerleader, was overheard talking about our band in a very negative light at her lunch table one day. In class, I stopped rehearsal a few minutes early. I talked to them about how negatively we were already viewed by the rest of the school. I talked about how difficult it was to change that image when the members of our own organization were championing those negative views to their peers. I singled out the clarinet player in front of the class. It was silent. I told her how much it broke my heart that all the effort I gave, all the effort her fellow band members gave, was nothing to her. How could she talk about the band this way, I asked, now with eyes growing a little moist. She tried to argue. She tried to defend what she had done. I pointed out how it just made her look ridiculous, giving so much time and effort to this organization that she was putting down to her non-musical friends. I will never forget the speech, the impassioned plea I uttered that day. I can recount it, hear it in my mind like it was yesterday, instead of fourteen years past. "Give me one year" I begged her. "One year... If in one year, you feel ashamed to be a part of this band, then I will personally tell your mother that she needs to let you quit. Give me one year. If you still feel ashamed to have me as your band director, then I will quit. I will go do something else. Give me one year."

Kelly agreed. She told me that she would give me one year. There wasn't a dry eye in the room. We shook on it. One year.

When other bands ended their marching band practices for the year to practice for concert band performances and other engagements, we continued to have at least an hour of marching band practice three days a week, every week, in addition to our concert rehearsals. The next year, we marched at football games. We had a 32 person marching band and performed The Hits of Mariah Carey as our halftime show. I wrote the marching drill myself, in what was to become an annual tradition for the next twelve years after that first show. Yes, we did march in the 1994 Lower State Marching Band Championships. We finished dead last, but we performed. Kelly stayed with the band. She was never caught ridiculing band again. The next year, my third year at that school and the final year it was open, Kelly was one of the drum majors of the band. She stood on a podium at football games and competitions while the entire school watched her conduct the band... HER band.

"You love music and you made the kids love it with you." - Rowena Morgan, Mr. Holland's Opus

I have taught hundreds of students since that first year, but I will never forget that first group. I can see the faces and hear the names. I'm sure I learned at least as much from them as they learned from me. Actually, I'm pretty sure I learned much more than they did.

Yesterday, I noticed that the high school of a beautiful, small rural town nearby, a town we lived in and loved for the first five years I worked at the job I just left, is looking for a band director. My mind drifted back to the memories of my first teaching job... to those first students... to the simplicity of that life. I thought about how difficult that job seemed at the time, but how I also knew there was no way I could fail. I thought about how easy it had been to give everything, every ounce of my life, to that job, and to loving those kids. Then I snapped back into the present, mind once again joined to body and firmly planted in reality. Things which seem effortless at age 23 are not the same at age 37. I realized that, while I have the fond memories of those first years of teaching, I am now also fully aware of the cost. As the title, from the movie My Dog Skip, implies, I also know that I view those early days through the hazy lens of memory and the softening filter of time.

"I'm not sure all these people understand
It's not like years ago..."
- R.E.M., Nightswimming

The thought of rebuilding that band program, while exciting, fills me with feelings that are not welcome. Having to fight tooth and nail for every inch of ground the program gains is immensely rewarding, but physically and emotionally draining. The idea of establishing relationships with dozens of students, parents and teachers I have never met before and working tirelessly to gain their support would be a harrowing experience at this point in my life. I discovered that I'm just not interested. That is simply not what I am anymore. It is a part of who I am, just as anything I have ever experienced has shaped me, but I am content to savor my memories and leave this opportunity to someone else, hopefully someone who is just starting their journey, to create their own. I hope theirs are filled with joys and sorrows, sweetness and pain, just like mine.

"Some of them knew pleasure
And some of them knew pain
And for some of them it was only the moment that mattered
And on the brave and crazy wings of youth
They went flying around in the rain
And their feathers, once so fine, grew torn and tattered
And in the end they traded their tired wings
For the resignation that living brings
And exchanged love's bright and fragile glow
For the glitter and the rouge
And in the moment they were swept before the deluge."
- Jackson Browne, Before the Deluge

"We may become someone someday, but we haven't yet."

"It's a sad man my friend who's livin' in his own skin
And can't stand the company."
- Bruce Springsteen, Better Days

When I started this journey in writing about a month ago, there was so much I was unsure of. One month down the road, there's at least as much I'm not sure of. Maybe more. That's okay. I think I expected that, but I'm not sure. On a conscious level, I wasn't sure that I would quit my job. I think some part of me knew, but my conscious mind was not, by any stretch of the imagination, ready to admit it.

“The images of the unconscious place a great responsibility upon a man. Failure to understand them, or a shirking of ethical responsibility, deprives him of his wholeness and imposes a painful fragmentariness on his life.” – Carl Jung

I think the first person to use the words "mid-life crisis" in relation to what I was going through, was my friend Cameron. When I heard those words it scared me. Absolutely chilled me to the bone. I was never a strong believer in the "mid-life crisis" being anything more than an excuse to behave reprehensibly for a while. That's okay. Not too long ago I was also sure that Attention Deficit Disorder was an excuse to do the same. I just chalked up my ADD symptoms to personality and stayed the course.

As a teacher, I was almost conditioned to look down on the term "ADD." Even when my friends started calling me "ADD-man" or "AD&HD" I still laughed it off and tried to focus. As my job stress increased, my symptoms went out of control. I know a lot of people out there still think the way I used to think. To them, ADD is an excuse; an easy way out. Believe me, it is NOT an "easy" way out. Dealing with the symptoms of Adult Attention Deficit Disorder while holding an extremely stressful and demanding full-time job is a formidable task. Add to it the task of keeping relationships intact and a house in order and it becomes mind-boggling. Since I reduced my stress, the symptoms have dropped back down to manageable levels, for which I am extremely thankful.

"Did you forget about the passion living day to day?
You keep your dreams locked down inside
Choking on a lifetime of 'never take a chance'
Wake up one day wishin' you'd tried."
- Edwin McCain, What Matters Most

Over the past two months, I have come to the conclusion that the term "mid-life crisis" is just as valid. Sure, I've read the research. I know there have been studies that concluded that there was no such thing as a mid-life crisis. I also used to think that the mid-life crisis was unique to (puffs up chest) the male of the species. I now know that this too is incorrect. Some of the best writing that I have encountered on the subject has been written by females. I also know, thanks largely in part to these female writers, that due to a wide variety of factors, this transitional period can occur at any time between late-20's and early 60's. Let's face it. As life spans have increased, this mid-life transition has become more apparent. Advances in our understanding of brain function and in the field of psychology have made the term "mid-life crisis" more acceptable. It is now less of a stigma. We have the "boomers" to thank. As the boomer generation passes through the gauntlet of mid-life, we learn more and condemn less about this passage.

"All true things must change and only that which changes remains true." - Carl Jung

Not everyone experiences the transitions of mid-life in the same way. Our culture has embedded within us that stereotype of the 40-something man in the bright red convertible sports car having affairs with younger women. While this does represent how some of us experience mid-life, it is obviously not universal. What is accurate about this portrayal are the symbols of longing for a return to the simpler days of our youth. We have looked in the mirror and watched, little by little, as the smile that people found so beguiling in our youth, has given us permanent grooves on our faces. We may be watching the lines as they begin to cross our growing foreheads. When we venture out into the world, at clubs and restaurants, grocery stores and especially the beach, people look at us differently. We have more aches and pains than we ever had before, and we have begun to notice that in photographs, we now look... like... our... parents... How did this happen? We thought, on some level, that it could never happen to us.

What about our parents? Many of us are reaching the point where we are taking care of aging parents. Some of us have already said goodbye to them, and the rest of us know that the time for goodbye is coming soon. We see, in our parents, a mirror of our future selves, and we are beginning to realize that this future is not as far away as we once thought. Time is up to its old tricks.

"Time is a pretty pony with a wicked heart." - Stephen King

I took my mother to the doctor this morning. Just as her mother did, she is beginning to lose weight. My father, who still weighs in around 350, is worried about this trend. Now, mom's doctor is also worried. She was told that if she loses any more, she needs to call her doctor. I enjoyed the time I spent with mom this morning, and am glad I was able to take her to her appointment, which I wouldn't have been able to do if I was working.

That's right. If I hadn't resigned from my job, I would've started drum line and color guard practice and leadership in-service yesterday. Now, I am officially "missing work." Vacation time is past. I am now faced with my first late July in about 14 years without my career. No more sweating on a football practice field in the late-July heat, sometimes on a metal ladder. This is going to be the catalyst for some interesting feelings to well up inside me as the next few months roll past. Marching band season is always the busiest and most emotional and stressful time of the year for a band director. I have been on a marching band field from July through November every year since 1984. I am not sure how that's going to make me feel yet, but as I hear the band practice at the high school just a few blocks from my house (they were cross-town rivals), I am sure I will feel... something.

What about career? During mid-life, so many of us find that the careers we chose in high school or college or soon after graduation are like so many of the clothes in our closets. They just don't seem to fit the same as they used to. Maybe we made hasty decisions about our careers without stopping to consider all of the information, or maybe there was a lack of information about an emerging career field. Some of us may have felt our skills sets or transcripts were limiting our options. We may have even chosen a college major and a career because someone else thought it was what we should do. Quite possibly, some of us even chose the best career for us at the time, but now fifteen or twenty years down the road, it just doesn't suit who we've become. Perhaps we've grown disillusioned, made bad choices, or watched a field dry up through changes in society. At any rate, this transitional period is the time when many of us see the road behind us stretching longer than the road ahead of us and decide that we cannot travel any farther without a change.

“We linger in manhood to tell the dreams of our childhood,and they are half forgotten ere we have learned the language.” – Henry David Thoreau

This "mid-life crisis" is a rite of passage. We sometimes hear people say, "I found myself." This is a time of throwing off the visions of self that were imposed upon us by our parents, mentors, or other loved ones. We are not re-inventing ourselves so much as we are seeing ourselves for the first time as what we really are. We are seeing ourselves with our youthful veneer stripped away, but not yet old. This is, quite possibly, the first time in our lives we have an authentic vision of self and we guard it jealously. We don't want to let this new being we've discovered slip away or go back into hiding. We nurture and indulge it and watch to see if it grows.

“We are not what we are, nor do we treat or esteem each other for such, but for what we are capable of being.” – Henry David Thoreau

This is when we discover that some part of us wants more than career advancement. Maybe that part of us also looks at his or her little piece of the American Dream (TM) and decides that it isn't quite what we saw in the advertisements when we were younger. We look at what we are and what we have and weigh it against where we are going. Quite often we decide that our travel plans need to be changed. Or perhaps, like Robert Frost's traveller through the woods, we simply want to see what another path is like. Frost's narrator in "The Road Not Taken" admits that both paths look to be about equally promising, but he decides to take the second path. Why? Simply because it called to him. Sometimes the grass really does look greener on some other path.

This is also the time when many of us realize that we cannot rely solely on others for strength. When we were young, we relied on parents or older siblings, or maybe grandparents or aunts and uncles. We gained strength from our elders. Then we saw that they were fallible. Even worse, we learned that they were mortal. We began to see their strength fade and fail. We realized that relying on other loved ones for strength often gave us a tenuous footing at best, since those we were drawing strength from were also going through their own struggles. Finally, we begin to look inside ourselves and find new reserves of strength and courage. We see that we can make it through challenges in our lives that we thought would crush us by drawing on these inner reserves. Hopefully, we still support each other, but this reserve of inner strength surprises many of us during this time of crisis. As a result, we focus on us. We give ourselves attention. We start to treat ourselves better because we know that we will have to be nurtured in order to make it through the challenges ahead. Stephen Covey reminds us to "sharpen the saw" in order to make it through the tough times ahead. As we reach mid-life, hopefully, we begin to heed this advice.

"In life we're the writers to our own books."
- October Fall, If We're All Alone, Aren't We In This Together?

In our modern society, we also begin to feel a certain aloneness at this time. Notice that I didn't say loneliness. We may have spouses, children, friends and other loved ones around us at all times, but we begin to realize that we can be in the middle of a crowded room and still feel a profound sense of being alone. That last time we actively sought out new friends was probably, for most of us at least, more than ten years ago. We have settled into the routines of life. We wake up and perform the same rituals everyday with the same people. This mid-life transition has become a time to reach out for other people; other companions on the journey. We tend to strike up friendships not only with people our age, but with older and younger people. The internet has greatly facilitated this searching for travelling companions. I know from personal experience that I have "met" some wonderful people and found some new friends in just the short time I have been writing about my journey. Though nourishing our inner strength is important, we must share our journey and allow others to be able to reach us and affect us. We are not alone unless we isolate ourselves.

“If you want to end your isolation, you must be honest about what you want at a core level and decide to go after it.” – Martha Beck

Once we find our inner strength and make a decision to end our isolation, then and only then we can we help support our fellow travellers on this path through mid-life. We can indulge ourselves for the good of others.

"This is your life, are you who you want to be?
This is your life, is it everything you dreamed that it would be
When the world was younger and you had everything to lose?"
- Switchfoot, This Is Your Life

"He writes good storylines, he's got those honest eyes, so take him home for just $9.95."

“People - they get trapped in their own history unless someone shows them a way out.” – Danny, Unstrung Heroes

Sometimes it seems that I can track the major decisions in my life by the song that inspired me to make the decision, or at least pushed my conscious mind in the direction my subconscious mind was already traveling.

The first time I can clearly remember this happening was when I was only a few months removed from college and desperately searching fro my first teaching job. I was on my way home from yet another disappointing and fruitless interview when all of the frustration and sadness from not being able to find a job just crashed down on me. The wave broke over me just a few miles from home. I was seriously considering giving up the job search and applying at a fast food restaurant, when a song I didn't even like came on the radio and caught my attention.

"I know I gotta be strong
Cause round me life goes on and on..."
- Brian McKnight, One Last Cry

Somehow, this song that I utterly despised spoke to my soul and comforted me. It gave me the strength to keep looking for a teaching job and ended my fast food career before it even began. I knew then that everything was going to be okay and I would be finding a job soon. Soon after, I had a few interviews scheduled in a school district over a hundred miles away, in a very rural area where I knew no one. I completed my interviews in old, run-down school buildings that looked like they hadn't been used since the 1940's. The student body had an extremely low socio-economic profile. I had never worked with students like this before. Nevertheless, I had a good feeling about the interview at one of the schools in particular, but I was very hesitant about giving the job strong consideration because it was so far from where we had been living, my wife would have to drop out of college. It was hours away from my family, in the middle of nowhere. On the drive home from the school, just a few miles down the road, a song once again came on the radio and I instantly knew that if I was offered the job, I would take it.

"When I'm working, yes I know I'm gonna be
I'm gonna be the man who's working hard for you
And when the money, comes in for the work I do
I'll pass almost every penny on to you
When I come home (When I come home), well I know I'm gonna be
I'm gonna be the man who comes back home to you
When I grow old, (When I grow old) well I know I'm gonna be
I'm gonna be the man who's growing old with you.

But I would walk 500 miles
And I would walk 500 more
Just to be the man who walks a thousand miles
To fall down at your door."

- The Proclaimers, I'm Gonna Be (500 Miles)

It was strange. The song had nothing at all to do with taking this job, but I knew as soon as it came on that I was supposed to be working at that school. Maybe it spoke to being far away from home and leaving comfort and familiarity behind. I'm still not sure. It wasn't very long after I returned home that I received a call from the school's principal offering me that job. I accepted with no hesitation at all. These two songs had already told me that it was where I was going.

These musical synchronicities continued to be a part of my life. As I related in a previous post, after my brother's death and my mother's stroke, I was deliberating on whether or not to leave my job and move back to the town where my parents lived. It was a tough decision. I spent the first three years of my teaching career at that run-down old school, where I found children that desperately needed someone to care about them. I restarted the band program there after it had been inactive for several years. I started with about a half-dozen kids in grades 6-12 and built the program to the point where a second director had to be hired to teach the middle school. The 6 students multiplied to over a hundred in just three years.

After that third year, the district opened a new high school and transferred me to this brand new building with brand new equipment. The new school was a merger of several schools, so my program grew once again. Near the end of the third year at this new school, even though things weren't as problem-free as I had hoped, I was agonizing over whether or not to stay in my comfort zone or to leave the house and town that had been our home for the past 6 years and go back to the town where my parents lived. When things were at a deadlock in my head, I was listening to a CD I had borrowed from a student of a band that was rapidly becoming my favorite band. I owned their first CD already and eagerly listened to everything they recorded. Once again, a song spoke to something inside of me and my decision was completely clear. This was a song I had already listened to countless times, but this one time, after a year of hardship, sorrow, and personal and family tragedy, the final line gave me the answer I was looking for.

"Its been so long since I've seen the ocean...I guess I should."
- Counting Crows, A Long December

So, I came back to the ocean... back to where my parents lived. I came back to the town where I first lived when my father brought us there after retiring from the police force in our small New Jersey town. I know it seems bizarre to be inspired to make huge life-changing decisions based on fragments of songs, but when it happens I just know.

When I was torn about whether or not to leave the job I just resigned, a single line of a song once again clarified everything for me. I knew what I was really going to do as soon as I heard it. This time I was listening to a CD on my ipod. Once again, it was something I had listened to dozens of times over the past year or so.

"I got four more seasons for all that's broken to mend.
And I got four good reasons why I can't go back there again."
- Counting Crows, Four White Stallions

When I heard that line, it sent goosebumps down my spine. I knew instantly what I was going to do. My wife was in the car with me, and she saw the change in my posture and facial expression. That was the moment she knew I was really going to quit my job and leave the career I had given my heart and soul to for the last 14 years. I'm not sure why it happens that way, or how I know when it's one of "those" lyrics or just another line to just another song. I listen to music all the time, so you would think that knowing when this was happening would be difficult, but it really isn't hard at all. The feeling is unmistakable. It's accompanied by goosebumps, my hair stands up on my arms. Sometimes my eyes water. I know my heart speeds up and beats harder. Maybe the lyrics just unlock what's already inside my head and make my subconscious thoughts acceptable to my conscious mind. I really don't know.

Since I got my ipod, it has shown a remarkable aptitude for musical synchronicity. When I was using myspace, I would occasionally do a "shuffle survey" just to see how it would turn out, and the songs that came up on my ipod on shuffle setting were almost always frighteningly appropriate to the question it was supposed to answer. Today, my ipod once again did something scary. I was listening to Counting Crows (of course), and in the middle of a song, it stopped playing. I looked at it and the main menu had come up. Thinking it was some strange ipod malfunction, I was about to scroll back to what I had been listening to, when suddenly, my ipod started playing again. It was not the song I had been listening to.

"I am Superman

And I can do anything."

- The Academy Is..., Superman (also R.E.M.)

What I was thinking about at the time was the idea I came up with for the article query I plan on writing tomorrow. You probably already know by now that I am definitely going to be doing some work on this query as soon as possible.

Other than my psychic ipod, it's been a relatively quiet day. I checked my voice mail this afternoon, since I didn't listen to it last night. I got the pleasure of listening to a wonderful message from one of my former band parents. She begged me not to leave and let the "assholes" win. She told me how much the entire family didn't want me to leave, but she also said she knew they didn't really have a say in any of it. She wants me to call her and I think I will be doing that tomorrow. Her son was an excellent flute player who graduated several years ago and her daughter was also a very good flute player who will be in 11th grade next year. This "band mom" spent a huge number of hours in the band room over the last two years helping me and trying to thwart the parents who were working against me. She wrote receipts, kept up databases, sold tickets, kept track of fundraising, and baked me cakes. She made me a Boston Creme Pie (my favorite) for my birthday and a red velvet cake on another occasion. She is a professional baker at a local grocery store's bakery and often brought baked good for the students as well. Her son has also been a great helper since he graduated.

When I sat down at the computer this evening to start writing this, my cell phone rang. It was my father. He was just calling to check on me and make sure everything was okay. He was much better than he was last time I spoke with him. It was a great weight off my shoulders. I really needed that. It was a short conversation, but it was without awkwardness or negative emotion. I am so unbelievably relieved since that conversation. Now, if I can find some income, things might actually start to fall in line.

I have been honored with yet another pair of awards, both Creative Blogger Awards, which I will be giving out to 5 deserving fellow bloggers when I post tomorrow. Thank you to JYankee and Epi for the honor!

"You’re more than what you make yourself to be

You’re holding back a side we've yet to see

You’re buried six feet deep and no one cares

I'll show you how to sweep them off their feet

Forget their ways, they choose to be

Everything that’s fake and insincere."

- Amber Pacific, Follow Your Dreams, Forget the Scene