Decision Time

How a life on the fringes of the music industry made me the freelance software developer that I am.
Lessons for the business world from the world of broken dreams.

Decision Time

Decisions are things we make. We make them all the time. Like the one I made the other day that sort of surprised me because I thought I was going to make another decision. How did that happen? I don’t know.

You see, it all started when I started wanting to play the drums. I guess you could go back that far but really it started when this guy I worked with at my last job asked me if I wanted to play drums with his band because their drummer was moving away to fulfill his dentistry destiny. I said I’d love to jam however I did not make any long-term commitments because you see, this band never plays any shows and doesn’t write any music. They just play songs that they remember from when they were in high school or something. And well, I know I’m writing you from the land of broken dreams but even I have to draw the line somewhere right?

But I do like this guy a lot – he was just over the cubicle from me and we laughed it up back in the day. And the songs they liked in high school aren’t half bad. They do a lot of Clash and some stuff from the Jam and then they skip on over to Neil Young…it’s pretty much all rocking stuff and fun to drum. I’ve been playing with them for several weeks now on account that the dentist left his drums behind for a couple of months so it’s been a pretty easy gig. I keep preparing my buddy for when I drop the bomb, because up ’til the other day I was prepared to say bye-bye, you know, especially when the drums get hauled off to Buffalo.

But then out of nowhere (and a big suprise to my brain) I saw my hand extending fifty bucks to this guy for space rent and all of a sudden we’re talking about getting a drum kit and stuff. Woa. What? How can you make a decision you didn’t know you were making like that?

The thing is, all kinds of stuff goes on in the brain that don’t make it to a well defined thought but they are there anyway. The other thing is, I’ll soon have drums up at a practice space – since I now realize that what I was telling myself is that I’ve been a big dreamer thinking I’d ever get to bang on the drums much ’round here any more what with the kid and all. And I get to keep playing with my buddy who is my buddy. And all I got to do for them is bang the drums and let other people worry about the other stuff.

Life is good.

Except for this new job I have which is kicking my butt. Why did I make the decision to go back to work anyway? Brain? Hello?