Well, I’m sitting here with our little cat, Tuzi, sleeping in my lap while I contemplate all that’s happened in the last 3+ weeks and where we’re headed. I wrote a couple weeks ago about where Tuzi was in her medical journey. Since then she had successful surgery and several more days in the hospital before she returned home for a rough weekend where her levels crashed and she had to go back in the hospital. It’s the following weekend now, and we’re hoping she can go home tomorrow now that she’s stable and we have a better plan. I have canceled all my upcoming gigs because she needs a tube feeding 4 times a day plus meds and a daily injection of subcutaneous fluids. There’ll be more treatments and changes coming.
I have contemplated slowing down or retiring quite a bit and have mentioned it several times to friends and in my blog posts, and it appears that might be what this is. I told a good friend this morning that that notion felt very peaceful, but it also felt like driving off a cliff. Of course I will be so busy taking care of Tuzi and so it’s not the same as someone who really retires and instantly has nothing to do, but it gives me a similar curious twinge. I have a lot of things I want to do when I really do retire with nothing to do. There is always a lot of maintenance on our property that gets neglected, and there are several improvement projects we’ve never done. I’ve acquired some tools this year in anticipation of accomplishing those projects. I want to spend more time in the mountains, and we’d like to travel to so many places here and abroad. We could move to a smaller place at some point too. That is very appealing.
As much as I love playing music, I’m not sure how big a space that will continue to occupy in my life. It takes time playing often just to maintain callouses on fingertips and pitch and technique in the vocal cords - not to mention the mental sharpness that comes with repetition that helps you keep time accurately and coordinate everything easily and with finesse. I get rusty pretty quickly, but time will tell. During the pandemic I couldn’t stop playing, and that’s why I recorded a whole channel of public domain songs on YouTube and many hours of video shows for my senior facilities to use. I do have some pain in my hands and fingers in addition to bad veins in my legs from standing when I’m playing. My voice is pretty gravelly now too, and I’ve lost notes at the top and bottom of my range. I listen to old recordings and marvel at what I could play and sing when I was younger.
I’ve also always had a drive to run as fast as I can in life from a young age when I thought I was invincible. I would push myself in so many ways. One way was to schedule gigs shoehorned so close together that I had to really rush and compromise my health or relationships. I’m not sure where this came from. Maybe it was just trying to get by in my early career - or maybe I was trying to prove something about myself. I’ve definitely accomplished a lot, but it was often without sleep or real preparation - relying on talent and luck to see me through. I still feel this urge to push as if I’m trying to impress someone. It makes no sense. In fact, I see this time as an opportunity to let that go. I did let go of some of it during the pandemic when everything stopped, but maybe I can take a deep breath and learn to stop pushing even more now.
So I really see this new chapter as a good thing although it comes with so much angst and care for our little cat Tuzi and her well-being. Life is an adventure, and we lace up our boots and head off into the day with joy and awareness.
Even though I have canceled all my gigs. I hope to be able to do some online shows when time permits. I will post these as events on Facebook when I can fit them in - sometimes on the same day when I know our schedule. I will surely miss all the folks I usually see in a month, but we do what we need to do as we find ourselves in life’s flow. I’ll try to post my blog occasionally and send out updates when I can.
Best always,
Tom
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