Little-known fact: when I was a kid, I played the trumpet.\u00a0 Badly.\u00a0 I suspect that most of my schoolmates won’t have any memory of me playing it at all.\u00a0 I was in the orchestra, but I always contrived to blend in with the rest of the brass section.\u00a0 If my mistakes were heard at all, at least the audiences weren’t able to pin them on me.\u00a0 Music lovers will be glad to hear that I haven’t touched an instrument since 1991.<\/p>\n
I bring this up now to illustrate the kind of person I’ve always been when it came to creative endeavors.\u00a0 I was never, ever going to be the guy that stood up and asked the conductor to give me a solo.\u00a0 I wasn’t gonna sing.\u00a0 Or dance.\u00a0 Or draw.\u00a0 Or paint.\u00a0 Or try out for the school play… you get the idea.\u00a0 I was afraid to try anything that I might mess up…<\/p>\n
The notable exception to this came in the realm of sports.\u00a0 I can’t realy explain why that was the case, because it’s not like I was a world-beating athelete.\u00a0 I would describe myself as solidly “competent” at most of the usual sports.\u00a0 I could catch and throw and run without tripping over myself, I guess, but I never had that spark that you can see in really\u00a0talented players.\u00a0 I had some good moments here and there, and my share of failures, too.<\/p>\n
For some reason, though, I was never afraid of looking bad when I played sports.\u00a0 The idea of striking out in front of my teammates never fazed me\u00a0\u00a0in the way that the\u00a0prospect of getting up on stage and being in a play, or giving a speech, or anything like that, always had. I suppose that we all have our comfort zones, for whatever reasons.<\/p>\n
I’m obviously thinking about this kind of stuff because something in my make-up has changed.\u00a0 I wrote a book,\u00a0splashed my name in big letters\u00a0across the cover and asked everyone to check it out.\u00a0 Given the way I’ve seen myself in the past, that seems like a pretty massive departure for me.\u00a0 I suppose it’s as simple as saying that I finally got comfortable enough with that aspect of my personaility to put it out there without worrying about falling on my face (I mean, I know that I might fall on my face, and I worry about it, but I can live with the risk).<\/p>\n
It took me forty years to\u00a0get here.\u00a0 I’m not sure whether I should be bummed that it took so long, or just happy that I managed it at all.\u00a0\u00a0A little of both, probably, but\u00a0mostly the latter, I think.\u00a0 And who knows?\u00a0\u00a0By the time I’m fifty, maybe I’ll try to start a rock band…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Little-known fact: when I was a kid, I played the trumpet. Badly. I suspect that most of my schoolmates won’t have any memory of me playing it at all. I was in the orchestra, but I always contrived to blend in with the rest of the brass section. If my mistakes were heard at all, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-116","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"yoast_head":"\n