I had to have been at least 16.

I remember that I had just recently purchased a Epiphone hollowbody electric and I thought I was the coolest kid on the planet as I walked up to the mic.

It was the intermission at a Jazz Band concert. No one asked me to play. As the rest of my band members headed off stage and I headed to the mic.

I have no clue why I didn’t feel the butterflies or stage fright that came later in life….all I knew was I had the Epiphone in my hands and I was going to sing my damn songs.

And I did.

And to this day I don’t remember any conversation from my parents, or my band director. The only comment was from the directors wife who wanted to know who the girl in the song was.

And then college came. I played in every coffee house I could. And really never learned anything. And then work, and marriage, and kids, and life…..and the guitar went away for about 20 years.

Actually the Epiphone went away right about the time I went to college. By that time I was playing a Yamaha 12-string. I played the 12-string any way you could…lol…I gave it to my youngest son.

Are you bored yet? Wondering where all of this is going? Get comfy…we have a ways to go.

We are close to the Marble St. Sessions. Playing a new Taylor 6-string, guzzling bourbon, smoking cigars like smoke stack.

Thought I was invincible. On to North Carolina.

Two shaky podcasts and then off to Florida.

The Meth Lab Era.

I met The Magical Mystery Tour and Freak Show. I found a voice. That voice sounded ok, but I just would not pay attention to recording correctly. Hell, I still don’t….luckily technology is better now.

Moving on.

Let’s fast forward a bit.

We can fast forward again until the move to Arizona. That was in 2020. In 2021 I returned to Michigan to watch a close friend die a horrible death. I spent time with Mom. We talked. We argued. We napped.

In the Fall, after I returned to Arizona Mom started to decline. I don’t have the words for this part. I want to be able to explain how these two deaths caused me to shut down.

I continued to make plans to return to Michigan for 2022. And then I just couldn’t go. I shut down.

So….try to wrap this up….I suffer from General Anxiety Disorder. I take two different medications to keep it in control. But there are times when those meds don’t work. Like when you know the person you really want to see, and talk with won’t be there.

There is an emptiness with that that can’t be filled.

But I try. I try with the silliness I post on Instagram, and Youtube…well, YouTube isn’t silliness…I want my kids and my grandson to hear my sing. I am an attention whore, after all.

So here we are.

A friend told me today that I am “Angst ridden yet completely laid back, avoiding confrontation and complexity yet tangled up in your own emotions”.

I guess, if we really look at it objectively, we did know how things would end….