I did, in fact, take nyquil and go to bed last night instead of trying to write… which was good because I swear my brainmeats were being boiled. And then I had a dream about my dad, who passed away almost five years ago. He shows up in my dreams on occasion and makes (very dry) commentary on what’s going on, usually, but last night I was the one who gave him advice.
He and his band guys were trying to figure out a way to make ends meet by playing music instead of having a day job. They wanted to be rock stars, you know, so this was a legit thing. But the method they felt they had to go about it was to play backup for other people at parties… like, a live karaoke band… and then they would get to play their own songs on occasion. So people would hire them for their big fancy birthday parties and take center stage and sing terribly, while my dad and the rest of the band played. And none of them were happy.
So he came home late one night from one of these (I guess I was in high school still for the dream), and I asked how it went and he said that he was tired. Bone-weary tired. Like doing the thing he loved was slowly killing him because it was only a shadow of what he really wanted to do… and that he no longer had time to do it because they were so busy catering to other people.
In my infinite wisdom (?!?!) I told him to make sure that he was leaving enough time for the things that he was truly passionate about. And if doing this was eating up all that time, it wasn’t worth it.
The dream ended there, because I guess I was SLEEP TALKING and Aaron was like ??? and I repeated the advice.
Aaron: Uhh…
Me: am I sleep talking?
Aaron: yeah I think so
Me: well it’s still very good advice.
Aaron: yeah that’s true
…
So anyway. This is not to say that all day jobs are bad. On the contrary, I love mine to pieces and I think that it’s greatly helped me with my craft(s). But you absolutely must make time for those things or you won’t be happy. For my dad, it was music. For me it’s storytelling. It’s so easy to get caught up in the nonsense of every day life, but it’s vastly important to remember that your heart NEEDS you to feed it the things that make life worth living.