We all know the saying, "You can't put a square peg in a round hole." Or it might be reversed. "You can't put a round peg in a square hole." Either way it means the same thing. Not everybody is chasing their dreams. Instead of dream chasing people try to fit in. What does fitting in look like?
I can tell you what fitting in looked like in high school. Long hair. All guys wanted long hair to be cool. If you didn't have long hair, you weren't cool. Bell bottom levi jeans. The bigger the bell the better. Dingo boots. Dingo boots were usually brown with a square toe with straps around the back that connected to a bottom strap that was held together with a brass hoop. Cool!
It was also more than just clothes. It was the type of car that you drove. I drove a 69 Chevy Impala Fastback. To be super cool you had to add chrome wheels. I had Keystone slotted dish chrome wheels. I would of liked Cragers but it cost too much to be that cool. My brother Rich helped me to install air shocks on it in his garage. I would jack up the back end. I think my Dad kinda liked the way it looked also. That was cool.
Clothes, cars, and music. You couldn't have a car and be cool without having a great stereo in it. Just typing the word stereo feels funny. Today they are called sound systems. I had a Jensen AM/FM stereo with an eight track player. Do you remember eight track player or was that before your time? There is a reason that eight track players are no longer around.
Eight track players had bleed over. The five seconds of quiet between songs was not always quiet. Or the low volume spot on your favorite song that was in the song to add dynamics would be a great place for another song to sneak through. This was very annoying. I was glad to see eight tracks go away, except for the music that I had bought was never replaced. I went on to find new and different music instead of repurchasing my Carpenter's greatest hits eight track.
You might not be my age but we all have things that made us cool. Maybe yours was Michael Jordan shoes, parachute pants, army jackets, leather jackets, tie dyed t-shirts, sandals, crocks, Ugg boots, disco music, etc. The list goes on and on. Did that stuff really make us cool? No. Did it make us feel better about ourselves? Yes. Maybe, when we felt better about ourselves it make us feel cooler or more accepted.
Sometimes to fit in we do what everybody else does. I am going to make a guess on what I think people do. Maybe I am saying this wrong. This is what I would do if I wasn't chasing the dream. Here is what a typical day would look like. I would get up an hour and a half before work. Take a shower. Get dressed for work. Eat breakfast. Go to work. Eat a healthy fast food lunch. Okay, that is probably not correct- Eat fast food. Get off work at 6pm. Drive home. Eat dinner. Watch TV. Go to bed. Repeat tomorrow. This would take care of a five day work week. This does not sound to exciting.
Watch TV. I read a book about how we can spend our lives watching TV. It is our social entertainment. We talk about the TV shows we watched last night with our friends at work. We spend time with our spouses watching lifetime movies. We have our favorite most comfortable recliner lined up at the correct angle so it feels comfortable. We have five hundred channels and more shows recorded on our DVR than we will ever watch. Also, if that isn't enough we will do Facebook during the slow time and commercials of the shows that we are watching. You can decided to look and Facebook for five minutes and you look at you watch and two hours are gone. Wasted time.
I don't know about you but I don't want to waste my life watching TV. I want to live my life. Instead of watching TV all of the time, I will play my guitar, write a song, read a book, go watch my grandkids play baseball or gymnastics, take my granddaughter for a ride around the block in a wheelbarrow, etc. I could be a round peg in a round hole and watch TV but I choose to be a square peg.
There are down sides to being a square peg chasing a dream. It is easier to watch TV than to work on a lyric that is too wordy or that doesn't sing well. It is easier to sleep in than it is to get up and write a book. It is easier to sit in my chair and do nothing. Sometimes, it is great to sit and soak up the silence. Occasionally, everybody is out of the house and it is just me. This is a great time to play my guitar loud which I do sometimes. Other times I enjoy the solitude. No television. No music. Just me and my thoughts in the quietness.
We all need quiet time. I need time to think, regroup, and sort out feelings. Yes, believe it or not us guys do have feelings. My stomach just rumbled. I am feeling hungry. I didn't say I had deep feelings.
I was in Nashville three weeks ago for my Bluebird audition. I had a week's vacation scheduled for the second week of October and this was the same time as the audition. I originally scheduled my vacation so I could do some work around the house and go see my son in Oklahoma. I needed to close down my pool. It didn't happen as I was out chasing my songwriting dream.
On Halloween day in Kansas it snowed this year. We are used to weather changing quickly in Kansas. We could have a forty degree temperature change in one day or less. The bad news was that I was afraid the cold weather might be here to stay and my swimming pool would become a hockey rink. Fortunately, my buddy Rick came over the day after Halloween and we got it closed. That water was so cold.
I respect dream chasers. The reason they deserve my respect is that those daily chores don't go away. There are still groceries to buy, carpets to vacuum, meals to cook, yards to mow, and pools to close. My wife, Mary Ann does a lot of the daily issues so that I have more time to chase the dream. I thank her for helping me chase the dream.