Out in New Jersey

Well, I'm far from home, sitting a hotel room, working through the middle of the night, some place on the Eastern seaboard. The lawn back home needs mowing and the weather that had filled my compulsion to open our pool months early has receded leaving temperatures approaching a more appropriate average for this time of year... bummer.

The house needs painting, the garage needs cleaning, and something has to be done about the basement which somehow usurped our other storage areas in becoming the miscellaneous dumping grounds for all things not actively needed.

Messes... obligations... responsibilities... duties...

Man do I want to be a kid again. Is it me, or is the grass always greener from the place I'm standing? Maybe I'm just jaded by a long distance from home and family, and I'm missing my kids (wow do they grow on you after time).

I'm into my thirties now and looking up the hill that crests in mid-life crisis.

Have I made the right choices in my life? Am I really in the place I want to be?

I thought I was supposed to be a drummer playing stages every night as I trot my way around the globe... I thought the money would roll in from royalty checks so big they'd be paying off million dollar houses in each major continent... I figured by this age, every answer to any question would easily be answered...

I guess the root of this comes back to a very simple observation I recently made during an intellectual discussion with my children's head school master: we are in adulthood the same people we were as children.

Contrary to what I've always been told about learning through "higher education", changing yourself for the better, and improving through experience, I've decided that in all actuality, I'm still that same kid from so many years ago.

A poster I recently saw on a rare wife accompanied shopping trip through the downtown of my youth (Traverse City) stated that "Everything I need to know in life I learned in Kindergarten."

At first I laughed at the audacity at what appeared to be an observation intended to exploit the writers humorous statement (which was backed up by more off-tracked comical punch lines), but after some reflection into my own outlook, I actually think there is more truth to the statement than fiction.

I still hope that once I'm older I'll have all the answers.
I still think that someday I'll start the career in arts that I've always dreamed of.
I still believe that I am unqualified for anything I do and am in constant need of trying to prove myself to anyone that will give me a challenge and a chance.
I still am scared of being a father and a parent lest I make a mistake and ruin their lives from my incompetence.

Now, I'm not fishing for reassurances or words of praise in this since I hate focus on me for anything as I just don't think I've earned it and I certainly feel that many of my close friends and acquaintances bear much more significant limelight than me. Yet, I need to wonder at which point do I turn and face the other way, grab the confidence, become charismatic and lead rather than falter my way through life?

Oh yeah... I'm still that kid, waiting in the corner for something down the road to change me, still putting off my gratification, still thinking that the next turn will bring the change I'm waiting for.
Can I not see that the things I've been dreaming of are here now? The dreams I had as a child really have come true (I'm happily married, I've got the children, have become the father, and really do know happiness), I just can't seem to see the color of my grass really is the green of happiness.

jp