Well, it's here. I hung up my uniform (if you call my bathrobe and slippers a uniform), and now I'm done. It's all over. And I feel a little weird.
My DSL is still on, so I'm not sure when that will change. Tomorrow? Monday? Who knows. What I do know is that I have to pack up my stuff and send it away. Well, it's not my stuff; it's someone else's stuff that's been inhabiting my living space, and has consumed my entire life, for seven years now.
Seven years. Did I get an itch? Perhaps. To be honest, there's a part of me that wishes I could have held on for ten...that would have meant a plaque. And who doesn't need another one of those?
Anyway, I turned in my "cool" card, so now it's up to me and my sparkling personality to see if I'm "cool" without being a high-falutin' record weasel. Hopefully I pass the test. Now I can be a freelance tour guide...and really? That's kind of cool in and of itself (and no, there's no paycut either, which just shows that I was always paid in glamour...and sadly, it was never that glamorous (Of course that is all dependent on one's idea of glamorous. If glamorous is forgoing your name so a pop star can just call after you as "girl", then sure. If glamorous is hanging out in dingy backrooms at record stores or getting into physical altercations with a fax machine, then yes. If glamorous is receiving as many XXXL promo t-shirts as you could ever possibly want, then definitely. Most importantly, if the glamorous life is one where you never leave your studio apartment and spend your entire day sitting next to the refrigerator on a computer solving issues that are quite minor in the grand scope of things, then I'm all that and a bag of chips. Viva la glamour!)).
So, here I am. And there are the boxes. In just a couple of days, the last decade of my life will be officially evicted from my home. Well, that's a little dramatic. I do still have my Sevendust and Snoop Dogg gold records. I mean, come on! How could I possibly part with those? I just don't have the work anymore, and that's really strange--even though I was ready to let it all go.
Don't get me wrong here, I'm excited about my new adventure. I mean, come on! If it works out as I would like it to, I'm gonna have the whole world in my hands. I'm just sad to close this book. My friend said, "When you're 17, and you decide you want to work in the music industry, there is no plan B." She's totally right. There was never a plan B for me. All I wanted was everything I achieved. It may not have turned out exactly as I imagined, but I never knew exactly what I wanted in the first place. I just knew that I wanted to work in music, and I'm lucky that I made it happen. Up until now, I could never picture myself doing anything else, and, suddenly, I'm doing just that.
Often, I would laugh to myself at shows, wondering what my 17-year-old self would think of me. There I was, standing at a show, just as I hoped to spend all of my free time, and yet, I still wasn't that cool. What would my 17-year-old self have thought if she looked into the future and saw me standing there alone in a room, entertaining myself with the ice in my drink that I slurped down entirely too fast because it was the only thing I had to distract me from the fact that I was trying to kill a half an hour between the bands' sets? I'm guessing that it wasn't quite like I imagined it, but I still wouldn't trade it in for anything. And would that 17-year-old be disappointed that I threw in the hat? Would she have wanted me to carry on and fight the good fight? It's hard to say.
Now I'm 32, and I've got this whole new plan A (again with no plan B). As I said before, hopefully I can make it a reality, but I do wonder (and experience is bringing this question), what happens in 15 years once I've achieved the goal? Will I find myself back in this place? Who knows. That's not something I need to worry about right now. It's just time to get over the hump.
Besides, the true battle is only in its infancy, and that's "Moth Wars 2008: This Time it's Personal".
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