2020 hindsight
02.16.20


Coming to you from the future today -- and looking back on where I was ten years ago.  It's easy to have perspective on it now that I know how everything turned out.  But back when I was living through it, it was a pretty confusing time.

For instance, back then it was hard to tell whether continuing to struggle along in my chosen field, musical theater, was a brave act of perseverance that would ultimately pay off... or a foolish waste of a life.  Years later, it's hard to remember how much anxiety those thoughts used to cause me.  But that's what led to my big decision in November 2011 -- which changed everything.

I barely recognize the person I used to be.  And I don't just mean physically -- though obviously there's been some, uh, big changes in that department too!  No, I mean the person I was inside.  I read blogs that I wrote a decade ago, and I'm amazed that I ever had those thoughts or feelings. I was wrong about so many things!  Ah, well.  Time has a way of revealing the truth, slowly, inexorably...

In those days I was always so pre-occupied with the question of posterity:  would I ever make something in this world that would live on after me?  A song...?  A show...? A child...?  Well the answer to that question came in a way I could never have predicted, though now it seems almost inevitable.  And it's strange to think that my "baby" is over seven years old now!  

I wish I could drop in on that confused 36-year-old guy I was and tell him a few things about the future.  I would tell him who his real friends are.  I would smack him on the head and tell him to stop taking for granted the best things in his life.  I would tell him to take the plunge and do that thing he's so afraid of doing -- because it'll be one of the best things he ever does.  But I'd tell him for God's sake don't do that other thing because that's six years of his life that he'll never get back.

All the missteps and missed opportunities that I could spare myself... All the things that were painful to me back then that I could laugh about if I only knew the upshot... All the joy, all the love, all the truth that I could get to so much sooner... Oh, if I could just travel back in time and tell myself!

But of course federal regulations prohibit that.



Musings Past