How should we spend it? The right answer is going to differ for each individual, but it’s something that life seems to force us to think about the less of it we have left.
Obviously time has a different meaning for each individual – I’m a 60 year old cancer survivor, so clearly my concept of time is going to be quite different from someone who is 18. I better spend it wisely – but what exactly does that mean? My mind tends to wander off in tangents – I’m a curious guy and when you are curious everything unknown seems interesting. It’s really easy for hours to go by while I’m investigating something that interests me, but is that time wasted? It didn’t seem like wasted time when I was 20, but at 60 I’m not so sure. It’s the unknown, and pondering the unknown, that makes life interesting.
I have always identified as a musician. It was all I did from the age of 17 until I was 45 – I made my living at it and every waking moment was pretty much consumed by it. I was either listening to music, practicing my instruments, playing music, writing music, or thinking about music. I started recording music when I was around 22 – so I was also obsessed with the idea of making records. I would listen to my favorite records and think “What the fuck – how did they do that? In what reality is this normal? Because where ever it is, that’s where I want to be!” It was like magic – I was just mesmerized, and would be incredibly moved on a very deep level by what I was hearing. To the point where it seemed almost like I was looking through a portal into an alternate reality, like there was “real life” and then there was THIS. I still think about these things all the time. I’ve often thought that if I’m not making music, I’m thinking about why I’m not making music.
When I was 40, I started an independent record label & produced some records. At 45 I developed a “second career” to help “subsidize” my music, because I was sick of playing gigs that I thought were bullshit. To me, playing music for any other reason than attempting to create art (or at least with the intent to create something NEW) was no different than being a prostitute. We were both selling a precious part of our humanity just to “make a living.” I’m happy I made the decisions I did, and they have opened some wonderful doors for me and expanded my life in some incredibly meaningful ways. But here I am, feeling like I’m not quite done yet, and yet not knowing exactly what that means.
Dogs just live in the moment – there is something zen-like and natural about that, almost spiritual. Maybe that’s enough…