I had to walk away from two gigs because of my hands, and it looks like even playing guitar for five minutes causes great pain, especially in my right hand.
I can still play drums, in short spurts and nt too aggressively. So I try to do a little drumming every day.
But my head and body have been sort of blah.
I used to love riding my bicycle, all the time. Covid, Long Covid and my knees seem to have made it much harder for me to ride, or to get excited about riding. Which makes me sad. I always wondered how I would phase out cycling and assumed it would be because of age and balance issues. But I expected those to show up a lot later in life than they have.
There's walking, and I try to do that when the weather isn't too cold. But even on nice days it is hard to find my way to a new set of norms since I had to stop working even half time.
Right now, I'm not making much music other than tapping out a few rhythms on my pad or drum kit.
I haven't made real music since early February.
And I feel like a different person because of it.
Only I don't yet know what the "different" is, or is meant to be.
I find that I am sometimes losing interest in things I used to be able to do wholeheartedly.
I'd like to play guitar but I can't right now, and probably not for a few months.
I'd like to think that working on the songbook would be helpful, but as I write each chapter (one for each album, plus some extra personal history), it feels more like I'm saying goodbye to so much, rather than figuring out what's next for me.
When my father's health was declining, and I rode back and forth two or three days a week to help him around the house and spend time with him, near the end of his life he sat on the sofa and told me, "I hardly ever watch the news now. It's all just stuff, and it doesn't really mean anything to me." I understood only in hindsight that he was preparing for his death on some level he might not have been fully conscious of.
I doubt I'm that close to death, but the memory lingers, and I find some parallels in my own life now, as things I can't do fall by the wayside. Perhaps guitar playing will return -- I certainly would like it to -- but riding a bike feels more and more unsteady and fraught. I don't know if it's because I simply haven't done much of it in the last few years, or if it's connected to my issues with balance and energy -- or if it's a bit of both.
I don't want music to stop being such a big part of my life, but I don't know what I'll do if I'm not doing it professionally anymore, or in the meantime, or whatever the timeline is.
I got a CPAP machine this week. Because I gained weight during the pandemic, I developed mild sleep apnea and this is supposed to correct that and help me get better sleep. It may take a few weeks to notice a difference. But it feels like another tiny sign of diminishment, and I don't like it.
I find I'm spending less time on Facebook since stepping back from performing regularly. With no hustling to do, I don't exactly need to maintain a certain level of publicity, and in fact it's hard to watch my younger, healthier colleagues still march on with their music careers while I struggle to find the new normal. So I spend more time drumming, reading and working on the songbook. But right now, none of it feels particularly inspiring. I don't feel especially inspired. I know that depression can come and go, and that ADHD is often misdiagnosed as depression (as mine was for nearly a decade). But this is more than chemical brain stuff. This is about transitioning to a new phase of my life, and I can't always tell if I'm transitioning mindfully or being pulled along by default.
With so few elders in my life it's hard to know what I can look forward to, or how to meet it as it comes.
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