when ambition meets apathy
i have big ideas. sometimes these ideas are too big to be realistic, but often times they are just big ideas with a light at the end of the tunnel. this fuels excitement, interest, intrigue, and desire. i love the way i feel when i get an idea and see how it could play out. thinking back to past successes, i remember when I decided that a coffee table would be a great project. having never built a table before, i started off by just waltzing around home depot for a couple of hours looking for ideas. a week later, i had a beautiful table showing with the emblem of my alma mater carved right in. i remember showing a friend of mine the day i completed it and he (somewhat jokingly i hope) said he might cry heh. well, ok it wasn’t THAT beautiful. it was in a college town for about 5 years between myself and my sister, so it no longer has the shine and allure that it once may have had.
i think to the speakers i built from the bottom up, and how it was a very fun project (and i think i am a little more deaf as a result!). just recently, i put up some shelves and brought some lighting and power to a part of our house that was in serious need of shelves, lighting, and power.
most of my ideas move from the foreground to the background in my life. these instances i have highlighted span close to 7 years of my life. of half-dozen realized ideas, another fifty simply float away. that initial spark and ambition to create and inspire slowly is reduced to a complete lack of interest (and time), and a general sense of apathy. the most frequent visitor to this fiery land of broken dreams is my desire to play, write, and record my music. right now i am in that upswing where i feel so great playing, have written a couple songs that I feel are worthy of being recorded, and i know that by the time i get my obligations out of the way and all of my ducks in a row for lack of a worse cliché, that inkling of desire will trickle down the drain to possibly resurface sometime in the future.
i often wonder why this is. i know that in recent months, it is a total lack of time thanks to you know who (as in the reachy-grabby-drooly-cry…y thing in the picture). i definitely don’t mind this distraction though 
but before he came along, it was the same story over and over and over. i need to find that spark and hold on to it, and i’m not sure how. maybe when i have more time (hah, when the hell is this more time part of my life… i figure that’s what retirement is for).. then again, maybe not.
so, i am writing and (hoping to) record some music soon. the obligations i speak of include but are not limited to: cleaning the house, cleaning it some more, getting organized, losing weight, eating better, eating less (you could argue this is on par with eating better).. taking care of the doodle-bug, taking care of my med-school-stressed wife, dealing with my students (i started my student teaching this week), dealing with traffic, gas prices, and a car that doesn’t seem to want to stay in good repair.. i guess this is a short list. even with all of that, i am less stressed than i was about a month ago. i won’t even dare think about what THAT list would have looked like!
