'The Dart Board' Concept

Hello and welcome! This is my creative space. The place for me to allow my imagination to run and see what it comes up with! They say that working on something for five minutes a day is better than not working on it at all. Why ‘The Dart Board’? That takes a bit of historical context…

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When I was in grade school, I was never a part of the athletic crowd. I was never an honor student. In fact, I was, in my opinion, often an afterthought. An also-ran. Someone who was there but not. Antisocial. Being that I was not athletic, popular, or part of the ‘super smart’ contingent, I gravitated to things like music, foreign language, and creative writing. Gym? Forget about it! Math? No way! Science? Not so much! I was more at home with the ‘nerds’ and I was accepting of that…most of the time.

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Post grade-school, I went to college and failed miserably. I was in the wrong situation. In the wrong place for me. Luckily, I was able to transfer to a different institution that was a much better fit. I was more successful and received a much better education. Still, I struggled with academia and never could get over the hump to earn a degree. My girlfriend, now wife, was so close to finishing a double degree in Music Education and Performance. We came to an impasse, a fork in the road, where I ran out of money to continue my education and, in lieu of taking out student loans, we decided that the proper course was for me to leave school for a year or two and work while she finished hers. That decision is now over ten years behind us.

 

For a myriad of reasons, a return to complete my education has not been possible, nor has the completion of hers. Not to say the last decade have had no value. I learned how to work hard, to a fault, manage money, correctly and incorrectly, and be a family man, through painful missteps and mistakes that I still pay for each and every day. But I am getting there…

 

Due to circumstances of my life, sacrificing too much, and concentrating on things that have no business inhabiting my soul, I have lost my creative mojo that should be so much a part of who I am and what made me who I was. That person is someone I am desperate to find again. I suffer from a deep emotional, creative spirit. Something that you will find with great regularity on this page. A lot of people who are blessed with creative ‘talent’ or ‘mojo’ have the ability to zero in on one aspect of those gifts. Hans Zimmer, for instance, writes film music. He is so alive in that world that he spends his time when not writing for blockbuster films touring with his group of collaborators performing his music as stand-alone works, selling out the finest concert venues to boot. I suffer from the enjoyment of too many things. Gabriel Iglesias jokes in one of his comedy specials says, while trying to motivate him to get a job, that his son says he has ‘too many options’. THAT IS ME! I like too many things to choose one! I enjoy film. I enjoy music of almost every kind. I enjoy writing. I enjoy roller coasters and theme parks. I enjoy building scale models. I LOVE pop culture! Which of these can I choose to focus on while keeping the others as side interests?

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The only solution I can conceive of is to start putting all of these affinities out into the community and the universe to try and see which one of these could hit and give me a vocation. A purpose. People get to do a lot of cool stuff. They get to compose new themes for Batman. They get to shoot pictures of the Indianapolis 500. They get to perform like rockstars for thousands of people. They get to build cool models on a YouTube channel and get 60,000 subscribers. I envy these people for shooting their shot and hitting the bullseye. But…I have a whole bag over here of things I enjoy and it is time to stand up to the line, take aim, and see where my darts land on the board. My hope is that my journey will inspire and encourage others who feel they have ‘too many options’ to take five minutes each day to toss their darts, too!

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