I miss the band

I'm reading a book called The Joy of Tidying, by Marie Kondo.  Among other things, she points out that (I'm paraphrasing) everything in your home should be something you enjoy, or something that's functional (e.g. the toaster):  if its neither enjoyable nor functional -- why do you have it?  And once you strip away all of the things from your home that you're indifferent to, you typically discover -- as a byproduct -- what is most important to you.

Inspired by this, I've been slowly going through our clutter-filled house and determining which things we actually like, and which things we've just kind of "held on to".  For example, I'm finally at a place where I'm willing to get rid of most of my old Criminology textbooks, left over from graduate school:  I'm never going back to academia (I enjoy working for the state government and being a data-cruncher!), and now that Criminology isn't my job -- I'm really not interested in the books.  But I already knew that.

Last weekend I also went through all of our DVDs -- and had the kids go through "their" DVDs -- and we probably divested of a quarter of each of our stashes:  DVDs that either we didn't like in the first place, or movies that we'd watched once, but really, will never watch again.  I ran the extras past my in-laws, and they took most of them; the rest they'll but on the breakroom table for their co-workers.


As a byproduct of that process, I re-discovered a concert DVD of The Who (The Who at Kilburn 1977) that I've had for a while but never got around to watching.  So I sat down and watched it. 

The Who isn't my favorite-ist band -- but at one point they were in my top 20.


And, as I sat there and watched the concert footage, I realized:  Dang, I miss being in a band.  I don't know about the "being on stage and performing" aspect -- because I've only played live in a band three(?) times, which isn't enough to give me a sense of things.  But I miss making music in collaboration with other people; and I miss coming up with original songs within a group context.

Unfortunately, there's nothing at the moment that I can do about this:  or rather, I would have to drop something else from my life (exercising; woodworking) in order to spend time in a band.  And, at various points since moving to Australia I have made some attempts to start a band -- and nothing ever came of it.

Ah well. 

One thing that has kind of filled that gap is that the wife and kids do their piano practice, I've played along on the drums:  that's pretty enjoyable.  :)

And I need to play guitar more often.


--GG