Defining moment

Reverb 10 Prompt (from Kathryn Fitzmaurice): Describe a defining moment or series of events that has affected your life this year.

For whatever reason, I’m imagining myself twenty years ago, thinking ahead about how my life will be in 2010…

1990. Fall semester of my junior year at Binghamton University is in the books. I’m officially a psychology major now, and it’s a relief to be off the biochemistry/pre-med track. I finally hooked up with a girl, and she’s a smoking-hot goddess. She was the teacher’s assistant in my stats class, and I used my recent knee surgery as a pretense for needing lots of “extra help” between classes. She even got me a work-study job taking over her old office assistant position. This is perfect, because I won’t be able to continue working as a dishwasher, given that I’ll be on crutches for a while. It’s winter break right now, and for whatever reason I find myself imagining what my life will be like twenty years from now, in 2010. I’ll be forty years old. Probably have a big gut and no hair on my head, if everything I learned about genetics is correct. I suppose I’ll be some kind of psychology… doing… guy. A psychologist, a professor or something like that. I assume Anna and I will be married by then and probably have a couple of kids, own a nice home, the whole nine yards.

Oh 1990 Bob, if you only had a clue…

Believe it or not, in 2010 you’ll still be working as an office assistant at a university! Easy now, don’t lose your lunch. It’s just a temporary vacation from all that psychology stuff you did for the previous fifteen years. It was just supposed to be for the year your wife wrote her doctoral dissertation, but you know how these things go. Not that YOU ever finished your Ph.D. You were admitted to two programs, the first of which restructured itself while you were about two years in, so you cut your losses and left with a master’s degree. The second program offered you a really nice scholarship, but you turned it down and instead played in a rock band for several years. I know, I know… you don’t know how to play any rock instruments and you can’t sing, but that will all change in about four years. And yes, I did mention your wife. But it’s not Anna. She dumps your ass before graduation even. And this will not be the only time you will have your heart ripped out of your chest. Don’t even try to predict what life will be like from year to year dude, because you won’t even be close. What if I told you that in three years time, you’ll pack up everything you own and move to San Francisco, just for the hell of it. Or that in six years you will have long hair — we’re talking Jesus Christ long — and you’ll be driving a 1971 VW Bus (which you’ll keep for a dozen years). Or that you’ll live in Mexico for a while. That you’ll destroy your other knee seventeen years from now.

What was the prompt again?

Oh yeah, so anyway…[shaking head to regain focus]. Defining moments of 2010:

(1) The Minor Stars CD Release show in January. I would never have imagined I’d be on that stage again, years after moving away, seeing all those familiar faces in the crowd. I was told by more than one person that I “rocked balls.”

(2) My wife finishing her Ph.D. in May! A long, long journey, which included such exotic stops as Veracuz, Mexico and Lexington, Kentucky. Finishing her degree meant, among other things, that my wife and I could live under the same roof for the first time since 2007. This didn’t exactly pan out, because my wife and I still don’t have jobs in the same town. But we’re spending many more nights together, and I’m grateful for that.

(3) My last performance with Minor Stars, in June at Studio B (the local NBC station). Bittersweet, but it was time for me to shift gears and start devoting my limited spare time to my own creative projects.

(4) Discovering the music of Irish rocker Glen Hansard in August. I don’t know why this hit me the way it did, but I haven’t been this into an artist in years. This dude is my musical soul-brother, and discovering his musical vibe has completely transformed the way I approach my own music. I can’t explain any of it, like I can’t explain why Henry Miller exploded my head back in my mid-twenties, inspiring the very birth of my creative life.

(5) Going to the Rally to Restore Sanity on October 30th. This was big for a couple of reasons. First, I actually followed up a moment of inspiration (“Wow, that sounds like an awesome idea. I’m so glad Jon Stewart is doing that.”) with some concrete action (By actually showing up in DC), breaking with my usual tendencies. Second, my wife joined me for the adventure, which was totally unexpected. She’s been completely immersed in school/career stuff for a long time, and it had been way too long since we did something semi-spontaneous like this, together.

(6) And of course, turning forty. So maybe it didn’t turn out quite the way 1990 Bob figured it would, but I’m more than okay with that.

2011? A big question mark, indeed. Just the way I like it.