My Biggest Regret
It’s a Thursday morning and today is going to be the day. I haven’t spent any time recently in my studio, and I have decided that today, that ends. I walk into my space, breathe a sigh of contentment, and start powering up my gear: the Mac Mini gets woken up, the video monitor turned on. I power up the rack mount power supply that feeds 120 volts to my synths, and start powering them up individually. Seeing the various colored lights come on, and the meters on the Mackie dance briefly, I smile. “Welcome home,” I tell myself, and “Hello,” I tell my electrical music-making friends. “I’ll be back with you in between my counseling sessions briefly, then we’ll hang for an extended time this afternoon.” Smiling, I exit my space to get ready for my 9am client session.
The day, however, has other plans. Client sessions unfold as they often do, with a lot of weight that needs processing in between sessions. Then lunch comes, and I am famished, so that hour is gone to cooking, eating, and taking a few moments to breathe afterwards. After my last session of the day, I feel depleted, so I lie down to take a brief nap, which turns into over an hour of sleep. Upon waking, its time to make dinner, so that comes next: cutting vegetables, prepping ingredients, sauteing, chopping, baking, etc. Once dinner is cooked, it is time to eat with my wife Tracie. This time together matters, so I settle into our conversation while we eat, which then turns into snuggling up on the couch. A voice in the back of my mind says “But what about music…?,” and yet in my depleted state, I push it back in my mind.
It’s now 9:30pm. Six am is going to come early tomorrow, and I still have to take care of our ailing 18 year old kitty Sasha, brush my teeth, and try to read a bit to slow down my ADHD brain enough to sleep. Realizing that the day is over, I slowly walk back into my studio space. A sadness creeps into my being, as I slowly power back down all of my studio. I sigh a resigned sigh, feel the creative part of my soul slip a bit further away from me, as I walk away.
I was having a conversation with my wife Tracie a few weeks ago. I don’t remember how it started, or everything that was said. What I do remember, vividly, is having this moment of clarity and also sadness, related to how little of my life I get to spend with my creativity. We were both talking about how the days just pass by, seemingly faster with every year. I’m nearing 50 years old now, and she is only a couple of years behind me. As were were talking about this, about how we’d like to slow down time if we could, and how life seems to be “life-ing” us a bit too much lately with all of the responsibilities, uncertainties, etc, something came out for me. I didn’t even really prep it, it just came out, like a capital-T truth: “If I don’t try to go all in on turning my music into a career I will end up being 85 years old, looking back on my life, and that being my biggest regret. And it will be too late then.” Those words came out so clearly, and I felt them so strongly, that even though it made me sad to say it, it felt like I was owning something for the first time. Something that I had innately known my whole life: I am a musician. I am a creative soul. That part that is more truly me than any other, and yet life, bills, responsibilities, etc, have always pushed me into minimizing that part of myself.
Some deep part of me has always known that my truest identity is that of a musician, an artist, a creative. The moments that I feel the most alive, and the most present always involve music: listening to it, reading about it, but most strongly creating it. The movies that I love the most have iconic music that sticks with me long after the images have faded. The hypothetical “what would you do if money wasn’t an issue” questions are always answered quickly and definitively with “make music all the time.” And yet, money is an issue. Credit card bills due to poor financial decisions made in the depth of neurodivergent struggles. Increasingly expensive necessities, be they groceries, electricity, rent, or the occasional fun spending (much more occasional currently).
The financial realities of my life in 2026, like I’m sure many other people’s, are exhausting. And with that exhaustion, for me there often comes a compete system shutdown. A shutdown that takes a large chunk out of the minimal free time that I have, because that shutdown feels needed to just survive, get back up, and face the next day. Yet even with all of this, my creative spirit doesn’t diminish. It’s still there. But, much like my studio, it gets pushed off. Delayed. Told “maybe tomorrow.” With each day of that, I feel a little less true to myself. I feel a bit more detached from the deepest part of my life, and a bit more despondent. Day by day, week by week, time keeps passing by, and that most important part of my being sits idle, waiting patiently, but wondering if it has been forgotten.
Thinking about this, my mind jumps in time to my final years. I see myself at 85 years old, sitting quietly in my recliner, passively watching whatever is on television (maybe old reruns of Friends or House, only with the distance that my 85 and 86 year old parents have right now to watching old reruns of Gunsmoke and The Virginian, television shows from their youth.) I look tired. Not necessarily beaten down by life, but definitely exhausted. My life hasn’t been a bad life. I’ve loved an amazing love for over 40 years. I’ve had friends that I cherished, some of them now gone but not forgotten. My Buddhist faith is still strong, so I am able to stay in the present moment much of the time. And yet, there is a sadness on my face. Not sadness of a life full of regret, but the sadness of one specific regret: I never went for it. I knew who I was, what mattered the most to me, and I let the fear of not being able to make ends meet by doing the thing that I love the most keep me from trying. From taking a chance on the truest version of myself: the artist within, who was always put on the back burner. He wasn’t completely ignored, but he wasn’t fully embraced either. Looking back at a credit reel of my life, it is full, but it is missing the key credits. Things like “music composed by” and “film score by” aren’t there. My record shelves, or whatever distant future version of that exists, are missing albums with my name on them. The thing that made me feel the most alive, nearly since my birth, is just a footnote in my life, as opposed to being my epithet. And when I die, some people at my funeral will be surprised to hear things like “he was a musician and loved writing, recording, and producing his own music,” because that part of me is not known outside of my innermost circles.
It’s Thursday again. The week has been hectic. Today is a lighter day of clients, but not a completely open day. I’ve drunk my coffee. The cats are fed. Tracie is on her way to work. My first client session of the day is coming up in about 15 minutes. I find myself drawn back into my studio space. In what almost feels like a reverence, I try again: the Mac Mini gets woken up, the video monitor turned on. I power up the rack mount power supply that feeds 120 volts to my synths, and start powering them up, one by one. Seeing the various colored lights come on, and the meters on the Mackie dance briefly as they send a burst of sound to it, I smile, this time a bit defiantly. Welcome home.