Learning to Live in the Moment

I spent the last almost 2 weeks straight in the studio...obviously I slept, ate, hung out with a few friends, etc, but for the most part, I spent about 15 hours a day working for no money. Rock bottom is an ironic time for me to discover the necessity of living in the moment, although it's not necessarily a bad thing.

You always hear successful people reminisce about the road that brought them to where they're at. I've been travelling that road full-time for 6 months now, learning everything as I go along. Being successful in your dream career is a lot more difficult in practice than it is in theory. This must be why so few people are as happy as they should be about their careers.

I should note that as I type this, my hometown of Sierra Vista, AZ is currently at risk of burning to the ground. The mountains where I lost my virginity in high school (to a girl a year older than me, thank you very much, haha) are charred. The cave my friends and I used to picnic in is inaccessible. The restaurant many of us ate at  before prom and homecoming has been consumed.

My roommate and I have been monitoring the social networks to keep up to date on the news of the fire to see when the areas around our parents' houses end up on the "pre-evacuation" list. If that happens, I may have to delay my career for a bit to go back and help out with the town.

I've got a lot of friends in danger right now all across the globe, fighting in wars, battling disasters, etc, and it got me to thinking last night about living in the moment. I tend to look back at the past a lot. It's not because I'm disappointed in my choices or anything, but because I like to analyze different situations I lived through. It helps me figure out why things worked out the way they did, so I can hypothesize the best possible outcome if I'm approached with the same situation again in the future. It's called learning from past mistakes...

The problem I ran into is enough time has elapsed that in looking back on the past, I would see myself looking back in the past and not acting. In my quest for a deeper meaning within myself, I ended up getting lost. I began to realize the act of looking in the past has actually been an issue for me in the past...

This is where I am beginning to push my thoughts away from the past and more into the present. When I'm 40, I'm not going to entertain my kids with stories of dinner parties with other adults. I'm going to entertain them with stories of adventures big (going to jail in 3 different countries, taking a hammer and chisel to the Berlin Wall, standing in Anne Frank's house, etc) and small (sneaking girls out of the house in high school, the first day of high school/college/basic training).

I'm just going to live in the moment so I have more to talk to them about later...

Anyway, I'm cutting/mixing/dubbing right now, but I've got probably 5 tracks that should be ready by the end of the month (sans emergency with monument fire).

About the Author - Brian Penny creates music under the name Mr. Versable. He tweets under the name @Versability. He believes in true love, and won't rest until he's found his...oh, and his last blog cost Bank of America a whole lotta dough!