Realizations

So you want to be an artist?  Uh huh.  Doesn’t everyone?   At one point in my life I thought it would be fun to quit my job and spend my life taking photographs.  My friends all said I had an eye for it, and that some of my work was actually pretty good.  I’ve sold a few over the years (mostly a set of snow pix from Alaska) but never really took it seriously.  I said I would one day open up a little studio in Montrose and rich folk with money to burn would flock to see my vision.  Uh huh.  Then, I saw this guy. 

http://www.tomtill.com/

Good thing I’m not considering quiting my day job (well, my new day job anyway).  I came to realize that to consider a career as an artist you’ve got to (a) be so incredibly talented that people emotionally orgasm when they see your work or (b) have a lot of rich friends or (c) be dead.  I am none of these.  *sigh*  The lottery is my only real option to realizing the shop in Montrose. 

I also came to realize that I am a fuddy-duddy.  I used to think that I was at least marginally hip or cool and had my finger on the pulse of things goin’ on.  Uh huh.  We went to a wedding on Saturday – a wedding during holy week seems wrong to me.  This assessment set the tone for the entire event.  The wedding was at noon and the reception was at 6:00.  Weird there too.  I did find that the open bar held no appeal to me, nor did the traditional tossing of undergarments or conga lines.  I did find time to dirty dance with my wife and discuss kids with the other couples at our table.  By 9:15, we called it a night, went home and slept.  Oooh yeah.  I’m exciting. 

We were invited to a friend’s house for Easter dinner yesterday.  There were 7 of us:  3 single women, Diana and me, a gay man (without his partner) and a soon-to-be engaged single woman (without her partner).  I could have screamed at the number of times that the single women at the table were whining that there were no good men available.  Sure, we’ve all been there so I listened and commiserated.  One told me of her string of bad relationships with musicians.  Uh huh.  OK.  Do you know any guys to set me up with?  Sure.  What do you like to do?  Well, we go see a lot of bands and there’s this one guy who is so cute…OMG.  We then proceeded to watch video of the bands she has seen.  All righty then.  What a bunch of scuzzbuckets (the guys).  So, what they are looking for is a guy who is a rock star, who makes a lot of money, wants kids, treats her like a princess, has a huge cock, likes to wear a suit, respects her in the morning, loves to shop, showers her with gifts, doesn’t look at other women and doesn’t mind that she’s 250 pounds.  OK, so, good luck with that.  I guess I’ve gotten cynical over the years.  I’m going out of town in a few weeks so the girls all want Diana to go with them down to this club to see these band guys.  As we leave, she says to me “Good thing I already made other plans.  I have no desire to hang out in dive bars checkin’ out loser guys.”   We left realizing that our lives have changed.  I think about baby clothes and cribs and retirement plans.  I could care less about where to find the cheapest beer on a Saturday night.  *sigh* 

Getting married and having kids changes things.  I don’t have as much in common with some people as I used to.  It saddens me.