Wiggle Your Big Toe...

I'm not going to try and gloss this over with humor and whimsy. This is one of those mid-life crises we all dread:

What am I going to do with the second half of my life?

Job satisfaction diminishes exponentially. Where are all the women I'm supposed to be compatible with? And 29 years of martial arts training (and all the injuries that comes with it) doesn't exactly have me jumping out of bed in the morning all sprite and ginger.

I chose a lifestyle (or did it chose me?), to follow a humble path of the minstrel-warrior, and have found that I live paycheck to paycheck; I'm up to my neck in debt; My creative juices have become bitter-sweet because the American work ethic demands I work myself dead-tired before I attempt anything I really enjoy; If I ever have children, I'll be too old to play ball with them; And, I'll consider my self lucky if there's anyone present at my funeral (which should take place approximately another 40-50 years from now).

My birthday is a couple of weeks away. I'm like a Klingon from Star Trek, when it comes to birthdays. I don't like parties, or cakes, or gifts. I like quiet meditation (or if I were a Klingon, I'd gloat and wonder why I didn't die a glorious death in combat), and watch some DVD's or catch up on some books I've been meaning to read. Many years ago, my good buddy and his wife took me out to dinner a few days before my actual birthday. They're sneaky like that. At the time, I was in my survivalist-mountainman yamabushi phase. So, they bought me a watch with all the gismo MacGuyver features on it. I put it to good use until it finally ticked its last tock. Sentimentalist I am, I still have it. And that's as far as I'll allow my birthdays to go.

California (SF Bay Area) is becoming increasingly more difficult for single people to stay. I check Craigslist almost everyday for used audio, video, and photographic gear. Artists and engineers are leaving California everyday, dumping their old gear before they go. I've picked up some really good bargains, in the hopes of building a side business in order to raise enough funds to move out of state as well with some savings as a buffer. California is too expensive, overcrowded, drought-prone, under-educated, air polluted, too many bond-measured, and lately - over rated.

As a trained audio recording engineer, people here in the Bay Area have said "Go work for Lucas." Yeah right. There's a group of former Skywalker Sound people that started their own recording studio because of the constant state of fear under Lucas. These guys named their studio: Banned From the Ranch. I tried getting in with these guys and found shut doors there too. [Curiosly, I work with a guy who is cousins with a BFTR guy. He mentioned me to his cousin and forwarded my complaint that "Banned" is just as closed door and arrogant as "Skywalker." His cousin's answer was: Yeah. That's about right.]

Sheesh!

Thank goodness for Blogger and YouTube. Great places to vent and be creative. Thank goodness for friends and family. AND...Thank goodness my one and only student chose me to be his teacher.

Like the character Beatrix Kiddo in Kill Bill Vol. 1 said after coming out of a coma and struggling to get back on her feet, "Wiggle your big toe." All I have to do is get past the hard part...Everything else gets easier.

We hope!