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March 27, 2005
monday morning
this three-piece suit is wearing me thin;
i've got an office, but it's much too small to let you in.
i know the difference, cause i'm different from them,
and it's monday afternoon.
"monday afternoon" - ian moore
mondays are hardest for everybody. i know this.
i've spent the last couple of hours in front of the other keyboard, watching the tori amos dvd, struggling to play along. no, i have no training. no, i have no sheet music.
my fingers were so stiff and lifeless at first. i banged clumsily through "crucify." had nice moments in "bells for her," though i couldn't connect the hearing to the playing as well as i once could. i suffered through the weird rhythm of "cloud on my tongue". i figured out most of "your cloud," and i felt that amazingly transcendent joy that only music brings me.
i love and appreciate the music. i turned the keyboard off and just sat and watched "precious things" and my favorite, "hey, jupiter." but as much as i love it, music is a memory of a past i failed and a life i lost.
i screwed up. there's no way around it, no soothsaying for it. i was given something, a history and a heart that lend themselves to music, and i wasted it. the first question my father asked me when we got back in touch with each other after 24-25 years was, "are you a musician?" he just knew. he just didn't know how sidetracked i would get, how unsupported my own dreams were, and how i would prove too weak to just follow those dreams anyway.
i had a conversation with a friend the other night. we talked about a friend of mine she went out with a couple of times, a 35 year-old lawyer. he and i are very different - he embraces the career, the lifestyle, the persona, while i reject those things, and never wanted them, and know they were never supposed to be in my life. but we both wear the same label, and almost the same years. for him, the limitations of the label are part of the deal, the cost of the life he wants. for me, it's the price i pay for something i don't want, and it's the history that replaced a better destiny.
i'm as annoyed to feel these things as you may be to read about them. again. maybe it's partially the 36 thing. it's always been the lawyer thing.
but this is a good chunk of why i feel like i do a lot of the time - it's a crisis of identity, the feeling i'm living the wrong life, wasting my own. the other chunk, the alone thing, is no doubt made more difficult by the fact that i'm not happy with my life.
so most nights, i can't get to bed. time slips by me in sleep, and the morning will be on me too soon. increasingly, i stay awake, trying to affirm, trying to keep alive the dream of who i really am. i write, i play the keyboard, i sing a bit. but i can't fight time, and i give up at a point where i can get just enough sleep.
i can't be here at 40, don't know if i can be here a year from now, or a month, living one lie during the day, living a fantasy at night, giving breath to the same lament, dreading the nightfall on sunday that'll too quickly give way to another monday morning.
i don't want to be the whining middle-aged yuppie. this is what most of us do every day, and we're luckier than so many people that have to do worse, have to work harder in unrewarding jobs just to get by. but just because that's how life is doesn't mean it's right. how much is lost, for me, for you, for so many people, for us all?
it's hard to see the way out sometimes, but my friends encourage me, and amelia's right - for now, maybe it has to be the nights and the moments that i live and go to bed for. it's back to the hope thing, isn't it?
Posted by Rob at March 27, 2005 09:38 PM
Comments
I have to admit, Rob... I don't get it. If you hate being a lawyer so much, why do you kep at it?
Maybe it's time to see someone for an aptitude test,or a headhunter, or a therapist to do some serious life-mapping.
It just seems that you feel so shakled by the label of "lawyer", that you can't feel good about yourself. Or, could it be that you can still be a lawyer, but redefine it for yourself?
I don't know...I'm beat from my soul-sucking job, too. I'm so tired I can hardly make sense, and my skin is dry and cracking from washing my hands 50 billion times a day, and I keep wondering it I might have screwed up and will have a LAWYER come sue me tomorrow...but that's my crapy job.
I guess what I'm trying to say is, very few people have a job the LOVE and would do if they were not compensated. As the need to keep life going (house, car, food, dog to the vet, etc) the demands of the the job swallow up all the little pleasures that many of us once had. I no longer find time to write for the fun of it, no longer paint, no longer get out the violin. NO TIME ANYMORE. And it will quite likely just get worse if I decide to introduce children into the mix.
I look at your life and think, "wow, he has the time and energy to play basketball, and coach it, and run, and write and enjoy music. He's very lucky."
I know you don't see it that way right now, but I thought I'd let you know how it looks from my side of the garden.
Sheila
Posted by: Sheila at March 29, 2005 01:08 AM
i know. i do see that, too, which makes for some interesting self-recriminating circular arguments in my head. certainly there's more going on right now, i think. i'm taking things harder, the anxiety is back, some other stuff is back. i'm working to get that taken care of.
but i also feel this sense of responsibility to myself and anything i might have in me. i don't want to ignore that with all the things i do that have meaning, but still don't leave me fulfilled. urg. more circles. point is, i'm working on it. thanks for keeping me in line, and i hope things get better for you. you're amazing at what you do, not only in terms of skill, but in compassion. i hope people appreciate that.
luv ya.
Posted by: rob at March 29, 2005 01:14 AM