Musician's Widow

Our recent move was overwhelming at times. Unpacking and setting up our new home has also been overwhelming.

I look around and see nine hundred things that need to be done, and I feel like I will never get it done. On top of that, I know that what I see is only part of the things on my plate. I have a web-site to do, a business card to edit, and ads to create (among other things). I’m keeping up this blog, and doing my 365. I have bills to pay, but I can’t sit down to work long enough to make the money to pay them.

Suddenly, as I let those realizations sink in, I get that feeling. The one in the pit of my stomach that says, “I’ll never be able to do it all!” Then I get a headache and dizzy, and then I have the urge to just sit down and cry.

Its in that moment that I sit back and I tell myself, “Yes, you will. One thing at a time. You will do it all.”

Life can get overwhelming. Life IS overwhelming in general! And we all have our moments when we fee like the world is crashing down around us. Deadlines to meet. Social events to attend. Bills to pay. Chores to do. Appointments to make. It is all just too much.

I know. I feel it, too. Often.

But, ultimately, one thing at a time. It’s all you can do. Sometimes, just realizing that will make you more productive! I know any time I’d get overwhelmed with the move, if I would just stop and remind myself to take it one thing at a time (or, okay, I’d text my Mom and she’d remind me to take it one thing at a time)… I’d end up getting twice as much stuff done. If I didn’t beat myself up that I “couldn’t do it,” I’d literally just do it.

I know, I’m simplifying things, but sometimes simplifying things is exactly what makes anything possible. So anytime you get overwhelmed and it all just seems too much, take a moment to remember to take one thing at a time. You can only do what you can do. And that really is enough.

Going into this year, I said time and time again how the new year had to be better than the last. Moving would be forcing us to make big changes, and it would also give us a new place from which to leap into the year.

Here we are, 12 days into the new year, and as I talk to friends (or as I skim Facebook) I find that a strong majority of my friends and family are also using 2011 for new beginnings.

I know of at least four weddings this year, if not five. I know of several pregnancies. Friends are also packing up and making big moves. Still others are looking for new jobs. Some have even opted to go back to school.

Everywhere I look, I see everyone with something new… even if its simply a new life motto. It’s almost as if we all took 2010 to try to “fix” things, while 2011 is instead a reboot for us all.

As I look around me, I still see so very many problems in my country and in the world. But I’ve always believed big change happens after individual changes are made. It only takes a spark to start a fire, after all.

And perhaps, instead of trying to fix problems, or instead of looking at the big picture and how “dismal” things are (because, c’mon, last year we looked at the big picture a LOT with government deficits, etc.), if we all just take the initiative to fix things individually and internally, we can start to see some changes to the big picture. Even a forest grows one tree at a time, after all.

I don’t know! Maybe my optimistic self is starting to bounce back these days, but I am really feeling hopeful for this year. Not just for myself, but for all of my friends and family. For everyone who is making changes, no matter how big or how small. Dream your dreams. Make your new goals. Make those crazy changes you’ve been afraid to make. You’ll never know what kind of positive change it could be until you try.

A couple summers ago, my husband and I started work towards opening a nightclub. It sits across from the bar we both call our home away from home, the one I am working in tonight. It’s a gorgeous building, and I still sit staring at it wistfully. We worked hard on our business plan. We met with contractors. We studied demographics. We researched grants.

In the end, we abandoned the project due to the economy. Finding a private investor proved harder than we anticipated, and the pricetag was scary.

It is a project left undone.

We still hold the dream of some day running a bar or nightclub. But this particular one was not meant to be.

Similarly, about six years ago, I looked into running my own music magazine. I forget now how the option came to land in my lap, but it was exciting! It was my first taste of a business plan, budgeting, and the true behind-the-scenes of publishing.

Legal and financial reasons brought it to a screeching halt.  Again, it wasn’t meant to be… but I’ve never (obviously) lost the publishing bug.

Projects left undone… we all have them. Sometimes its strictly never meant to be, others are just not meant to be right then. Either way, lessons are learned, and you walk away wiser. Just because its undone, it not anything to consider lost.

What are some of your projects left undone? Are they done for good, or just on pause?

It happens to all of us at some point, if you ever travel by car… getting stuck in traffic.

I’m currently on a quick little road trip to see my family in Texas. In fact, I write from my phone in the truck. WordPress app for the win!

Don’t worry, I’m not driving and blogging. Promise.

I’m in Northeast Texas on a state highway I’ve never been on before. It’s beautiful! Luckily, storms that were through here today have long moved on… blue skies and puffy white clouds, wide open fields.

This is not where I was supposed to be, though. I usually take the Interstate the whole way. I like to just keep moving. No small towns with Barney and his one bullet and ten stop signs. It’s fast and I can go into auto-pilot on that route.

However, today, we got about half an hour out of Dallas, and it was a parking lot. Our handy dandy smart phones informed us this was due to road construction. No love for TxDOT from me due to this. Especially when you see traffic as far as the eye can see, both ahead of you and behind you.

Oh okay, it was a little amusing until a Barney stopped people from cutting across a closed Interstate on-ramp onto the access road to catch an FM road away from the madness. Then I got annoyed. There seemed no way out. No end in sight. 45 minutes passed, we moved about a mile.

In comes the handy smart phone and a crossover and a state highway. Yay! Now we are moving and enjoying better scenery. Live in the moment and find the positive in the situation.

Stuck in traffic stinks, but it forced us to take the path we’ve never traveled. There is something cool about that.

Growing up, I loved horses. They were my favorite animal, and I dreamed of some day owning one of my own.

We lived on over an acre of land, and my young self couldn’t understand why I couldn’t feasibly have one. That was, until my parents very logically explained to me about the cost of having a horse, and I realized it wouldn’t happen. I was “okay” with that, but I never stopped loving horses.

I read books about horses. I had bookmarks with horses on them. I had figurines of horses. I had shirts with horses.

I loved horses.

One Christmas, I received as a gift a “statue” (it was plastic and probably meant to be more of a toy than a statue) of Secretariat, a famous race horse. I heard the horse’s story, but it really went in one ear and out the other. I just thought it was a pretty horse to put on my shelf.

Oh okay, I played with it. I still have that plastic statue, one ear broken, some of the red/blown coloring faded off its back. However, I won’t let my husband toss it (along with other horses statues) no matter how much he looks at me like I am crazy for still having them.

I still love horses.

Now, I’m not the most observant person at times. Especially when it comes to movies coming out in theater. Movie tickets are just too expensive (in my opinion) and I’ve never been a huge movie fanatic. If I go to the movies once a year, I’m doing good. Twice in a year, someone call CNN, this is news.

All that being said, I not once noticed any movie trailers for the new Disney movie “Secretariat” until an offer came in my Inbox from BlogHer for an early screening of the movie from Disney. I didn’t hesitate. I didn’t ask my husband. I didn’t think twice. When I saw a movie screen on a date we were both free in Nashville, I requested two passes. I think I squealed out loud with the confirmation email came to my Inbox. Not only were we going to the movies, we were going to see a horse movie!!

So, last night, my husband and I got dressed and headed out for movie night/date night. We arrived and I really had no idea how it would all go. The theater was mostly dead, save for a long line waiting to go into one of the theaters. I needed to use the restroom, so my husband took my email and went in search of the Disney representative as we’d been instructed to do.

When I came out, my husband pointed to the line and said, “We’re to get in that line.” I have no idea why I was surprised to see so many people there for the movie, but I was. I jumped in line while my husband went to get us something to drink. The line started to proceed into the theater, and I noticed everyone around me had special Disney passes. When I got to the front of the line, I handed the lady my email I’d received and a young man beside her asked for my name. I gave it to him, he glanced at his iPhone and went, “Okay! You’re good!”

Waiting for the movie to start...

So, we went in and found ourselves a pair of seats and settled in to people watch. I found myself wondering if anyone else was there via BlogHer. One young man came in carrying a spiral notebook, and I guessed he was there from a local newspaper or something. There were kids and elderly alike there, but I’d guess the median age to be around 30-35.

Finally, 7:00 rolled around and the movie started. I didn’t know what to expect of the movie other than the story of this famous race horse… what I got, though, was a movie I want on DVD right NOW. I found a movie that will most definitely be in my top 10 for a long time.

The movie, for me, is one every woman in this world needs to see. Every woman who has dreams. Every woman who has ever been told they can’t do something. Every woman who says, “It can be done.”

The movie is billed at the story of Secretariat, but for me is was more the story of Penny Chenery (played by Diane Lane). Penny Chenery is the owner of Secretariat, trying to garner respect for herself and her horse in what was in the 1970s very much a men’s club.

At one point I whispered to my husband, “Back then, she didn’t have much of a voice.” Women were still too new to business in general to be taken seriously — much less horse racing — but she fought every nay-sayer that came her way. Everyone from her husband to the press to other horse owners.

This movie made me laugh countless times. John Malkovich as trainer Lucien Laurin adds a wonderful comedic quality to the movie while also bringing a touching dramatic story of his own. This movie most definitely made me cry. It made me hold my breath. It made the audience applaud — during the movie and as the credits rolled. I’ve never gone to a movie in which the whole crowd applauded at the end.

As my husband said as we left, this movie is going to be huge… Coming from someone who literally goes to the movies once a year, THIS movie is one to go see. Heck, I might even sneak off sometime and go see it again myself!

I’ve now brought my Secretariat statue in from storage to put on my desk. After this movie, that statue no longer only means, “I love horses.”  It means, “I can beat the odds. I can do anything I set my heart on doing. I can do the impossible.”

*Thank you Disney and BlogHer for this wonderful opportunity and movie!

Back in July, I read a post in Living in the Moment called Future Unsure. It really resonated with me, and I bookmarked it so I could some day write my own version of that post. Here I am, just over a month from my 30th birthday, and it seems as good a time as any to tackle that post.

Ten years ago, I was a sophomore in college at Temple College. (Yeah, I was a transfer student to Texas A&M, but I bled maroon from birth.) I’d, luckily, already figured out that I didn’t know everything. I used to joke that at 18 I went blonde literally and figuratively. I’d colored my dark blonde/light brown hair to a bright blonde, and around that same time I felt like I went “stupid.”

Perhaps a big part of that was the fact that I had, thanks to exam exemptions through high school, forgotten how to take tests and, beyond that, I had a general “whatever” attitude regarding my grades in school. They wouldn’t transfer as A’s anyway, so why bother?

Herein lies something I’d tell my going-on-20-self: Just because you might not get to keep credit for a job well done, its no excuse to not do your best. Give everything you do your all. If you give everything your all, you’ll always either succeed with greatness or fail miserably, but you’ll be able to solidly stand behind what you did either way. Giving anything only half-yourself, you’ll always wonder if you could have done better. If you could have been the best of the best as opposed to just running with the crowd.

But, as I said, I knew I didn’t know it all, but it doesn’t mean I didn’t think I had it all figured out. See, I knew I would soon be going to Texas A&M and would graduate with a degree in journalism. I also knew I’d some day live in Nashville, TN. I knew I’d one day throw myself towards the dream of writing a book. I got all those things right on the money!

However, I didn’t know my husband yet. I didn’t know I’d be a “musicians widow.” I didn’t know I’d grow disillusioned by the newspaper business. I didn’t know I could actually enjoy working for my parents bookkeeping and tax business. I didn’t know I’d get myself deep in debt. I didn’t know I’d at any point in life feel unsure of myself. I didn’t know I’d end up a cat person. I didn’t know I’d this deeply wish I’d studied photography. I didn’t know that the path I dreamt of could ever change direction and course… and that I’d actually be more than okay with that fact.

With every thing I didn’t know, I’ve learned a lesson and grown. There is one thing I can say for certain: I don’t have a clue what to expect in the next ten years. If I could tell my 20-year-old self another thing, it wouldn’t be all those details I listed. It would simply be: Keep your goals and your dreams alive and chase them with all your might, but know that nothing is guaranteed except for the many twists and turns along the way towards those dreams.

See, at 20, I was career woman extraordinaire. I had a set path that would take me eventually to NYC for a huge journalism career that would eventually wind around down into Nashville… some day. I would live life in power suits, attending big events, rubbing elbows with all the elite people you’d want to meet.

I’ve traded in my power suits for sweats most days, but I keep a healthy selection of business attire for any number of potential meetings or events. I can say I’ve been blessed to still rub elbows with some of the elite people in the music industry. But I tossed NYC off my list of places to live. I’ve realized I’d not be happy there… I’d love to some day visit, but I don’t think it would fit me to live there.

I have a much more down to Earth view of myself. So in the next 10 years, my goals are for us to have a beautiful family, be as debt-free as possible, and to make a solid living with my writing and photography while my husband continues to tickle the ivories for a living. Those are sensible goals and dreams, leaving plenty of opportunity to chase any number of possibilities as they come along the way. Leaving myself room for adventure, learning and growth.

So to my 20 year old self and my 30 year old self: keep the dream, but realize you might not get there along the exact path you think… you’ll get there along the path you’re meant to take, complete with joys, sadness, successes and failures. Embrace that fact, and simply LIVE.