Musician's Widow

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?

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.

It’s the last day of July, and I, for one, can’t see it end fast enough. This has not been a good month for anyone, as I’ve talked about in previous posts, and its not totally over just yet. We have to get through today before we can breathe a sigh of relief as this month to passes. But, I am definitely going into August with optimism.

Times like July has been can either get you down or motivate you to make things better. I’m opting for the latter of the two.

It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.
– Henry David Thoreau

I see opportunities everywhere I look, and I see Aug. 1 as a chance to turn over a new leaf and pursue those opportunities with even MORE vigor. Take the positive changes I’ve had happen in July and build upon them. I refuse to focus on the negative aspects. I acknowledge them, and I work towards fixing them. But I won’t focus on them. I plan to turn those negatives into a positive force to push forward.

Tonight, I sat and did a brainstorming exercise. I plan to participate, for the first time, in NaBloPoMo in August to jump start a good habit of posting daily. I listed out 50 blog ideas. Then I kept going. I’m up to 54 with atleast two of them holding the potential to be a recurring weekly theme. I’m excited! But I want to open up the comments to anyone with blog ideas… any topics that others would be interested in seeing me explore? I welcome suggestions, and I welcome August. Here’s to making it a far better month than the one before.

Enough with the bad news for right now. I don’t want to keep being a downer, when I really am at heart a total optimist! You can’t keep me down for long.

One thing that’s really risen me up is feeling success is within my reach with my writing dreams. I can see it IS possible. I CAN do this.

For the last few months, I’ve been throwing myself into learning more in-depth about my trade(s). Checking out books from the library. Purchasing books. Reading blog after blog after blog. Reading online magazines. Talking to people who are already doing what I want to do.

If I were to ever allow myself regrets in life, one would definitely be putting my dreams and goals of writing for a living on the back burner for the last few years. I’ve coasted along too long, and today I look around me and realize how much further I could be in my career if I’d only gotten more serious a lot sooner.

I can’t, however, beat myself up for long.  Instead, I am throwing myself into my trade with a sheer determination that I’m not sure I’ve quite had since I wanted to make sure I got accepted into Texas A&M University.

I didn’t have a contingency plan then, and I really don’t have much of a contingency plan today.  I got in then. I’m going to succeed today.

Back then, I did my homework. Today, I am doing my homework.

It’s slowly starting to pay off! I’m SO honored to now be a part of the Blogher Publishing Network as well as writing for Blissfully Domestic. I’m an active contributor to Road Widows, and  I have a separate review blog as a work in progress that I hope to go live with in the next week. I have a secondary “business” in the planning stages, and I’ve signed up with a couple affiliate networks. I’m soon going to be going after clients, submitting guest blog posts, and looking for every possible way to further myself.

This is a no-holds-barred fight to see my goals and dreams come true.

I am open to advice. (Except the kind that goes something like, “Don’t do it!” Too late, I’m past the point of no return.) I’m going to continue “stalking” a lot of other bloggers and authors for every kernel of advice and information they are willing to drop along the way.

It’s a twisty road I find myself running along full speed. In places it been well trodden and smooth. In others, its going to be a jungle. I know this… I’m prepared for it. I can do it.