Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?
-Mary Oliver
So today at work I learned that sometimes you have to pay a price for your ideas on how to live your life. It stings a bit, but I'm forging on with the vision for my "one wild and precious life".
That life includes the purchase of my first electric guitar. I'm learning to do riffs, bend strings and generally having a ball. It is encouraging me that the left path is the right path for me. My ideas for my life may not agree with others around me, but it is my life and what is left of it, I will live the best I can....I won't back down.
Rock and Roll has no beginning and no end for it is the very pulse of life itself.
-Larry Williams
I love all kinds of music, and will vary what I listen too, but rock and roll is my core. Especially when tinged with the flavor of the south. I've alluded to my love of Alice Cooper and why he meant so much...but Tom Petty, well his music was what I turned to when I was working on issues, when I was driving long distances...just a rock and roll soul brother whose seeming simplicity of lyric, hide a profound view of the experience of life, and it was what helped me make sense of so much of what went on in my life, especially in the 90s.
Losing him was like losing a family member who had meant so much in years past, but events kind of pulled you away from them. And now you delve back into your memories and revisit the relationship. I've been listening to him a good deal on his channel on Sirrius Xm. A song that became my lifeline during a break-up of a long term relationship and some other events connected to it, was 'Waiting for Tonight'. As it was a song that was hidden in the Playback release...you don't hear it much. And it faded from memory for me. I heard it yesterday for the first time in a long time. It was surreal...I'm still not settled.
So here it is one of the songs of all that he wrote, that really touched me, and helped me survive. I am grateful to him and to all who keep rock and roll's pulse going.
Starting a new year is interesting. Somehow in western culture rather than seeing it as just another day on the road, we seem to view it as taking a turn onto a new road. And since that is the mindset that I exist in I'm really aiming to turn on the left road or path. In ending 2017 I took some very active steps to contract my role at my work. The wanted me on an expanding career path of leadership, but I chose a contracting path to focus on my clinic and avocations. They weren't happy, but for the first time in my work history, I really am saying no. Usually I do say yes eventually, but there was an internal shift in recent months and I know that I will not.
I am preparing to retire from clinical social work and work in other areas including life coaching in the next few years. Although not required I am taking a certification course. I'm also increasing time spent with my music, art and when I can photography (not as active as I once was, but still will on occasion take up a shoot, like my sister's wedding). I'm not sure where these roads will lead, but for me they have been far less traveled and I have a feeling choosing them to go down in 2018 will make all the difference. And no, to answer a question a friend asked about it, I'm not scared...I don't scare easy.
