Category Archives: Goals and Dreams

Love of the Game; Music, Mentoring, Writing

Paul Harvey, or
Chuck Swindoll, or some well known radio speaker once said, “Find something you love doing and do it so well you make a living at it.” That was several decades ago and I am still striving toward that goal. I have been paid for musical performance or accompaniment, paid for individual music lessons, and paid per piece for newspaper articles, but never has any combination of these resulted in the stand alone income that might be called “a living.” It takes a relationship with the incorporated world to provide security. I have made enough to live on while pursuing the teaching and performance of music in the organized public school system. I am making enough to pay the bills and keep food on the table while organizing, managing, and getting other people where they need to go, via the university setting.So, what does one do with these other naked dreams and unfulfillments? I will take as a model the family of my good friend in
Texas.  Like me, she has three children; two male, one female.  The two boys are in college and the girl, a senior in high school.  My friend works in the public school system because she loves helping children grow and her own are nearly grown.  Her husband has faithfully worked a computer related corporate job for years.  She writes in her yearly Christmas letter that he, “still plays basketball every opportunity he gets; usually with friends at 6:00 A.M.” Two of the kids play on a co-ed soccer team together.  None of these adults aspire to be professional athletes.  None nurse broken dreams of million dollar sports contracts and the easy life.  They rise at six and practice and train – FOR THE LOVE OF THE GAME.

Fame is the Pitts, but it can be a bit Jolie

So, how does one achieve the precise amount of notoriety to keep all the jolly and avoid the pits?

I have been musing on this dilemma much lately; not only as I construct this Blog, but also as I search for the optimum job, make efforts to get my books published and marketed, and balance conflicting desires:  Stage and Studio verses Cave and Quiet; Retirement and Leisure verses Aspiration and Acquirement; Security verses Adventure.  I am too conscientious to throw care to the wind and be a free spirit; too responsible to retire and leave things undone; too fearful and conservative to take unnecessary risks. In the end, as always, the final word is survival; and hierarchy of need triumphs.

Yet; one must remember the intent of Carpe Diem. One must be reminded of Emerson’s fine admonition:  “Sail into port grandly, or be content to sail with God the seas!”