So this is the only day in my life, today….I am not dying or anything (I hope!)) but yesterday is gone, certainly not forgotten, in fact it was a very good day…We went to the zoo and had a good time strolling the zoo grounds and observing the animals as they observed us…Tomorrow is another day, it may or may not arrive, filled with hopes and promises and plans and things to do, but nobody is guaranteed tomorrow…

No, today is the only day we truly have, and we can make of it what we will…It is always been that way, and it will always be that way…How many people do you know that sacrifice everything today for the bright and shiny promise of some future tomorrow, which sometimes, in fact usually, never arrives at all?…Or when it does, it is somehow different and not all that we had expected it to be?…

Sometimes we forgot about that one true fact, the certain knowledge that we are all only guaranteed one day, today, and how we should be thankful that we even wake up each morning…. Be glad to take the time to smell the coffee and admire the roses before we rush off to begin our busy days….Take nothing for granted, because it can all disappear in a heartbeat…

Work world is a necessary evil, a voracious waste of time and energy but you have to pay the bills, you need to provide shelter for yourself and your children, you need to be able to put food on the table, you need to be able to pay all the bills that make life liveable, no matter what standard of living you are used to, you have to work to keep it all together…All my fellow baby boomers know what I mean….

I think the very luckiest people in the world are those people who actually enjoy their work, in fact I think that is the real secret of life, to find something you would do for free anyway just because you love doing it, and then find somebody to pay you do it! For me, that would be writing, be it blogs, short stories, magazine articles, novels or music, both composing lyrics and playing guitar…

I love to compose songs and accompany myself on guitar, my strength IS my lyrics so I would have to classify myself as an Indie/Folk type of musician…. I am certainly nobody as eclectic and eclectic as a Jimi Hendrix (a once in a lifetime prodigy) or a Jimmy Page or a Jeff Beck or an Angus Young, all men who can pour out molten threads of lead riffs that thrill and chill you to the bone and all at the top of my personal “must listen” to list of musicians…

No, my music, which is very important to me, is all about the words, maybe sort of like early Bob Dylan, although I truly admire Neil Young for his lyrical content and excellent musicianship too, and so many others…Joan Baez for her incredibly pure and angelic voice, Keith Richards for his dogged determination and dedication to rock and roll, Chrissie Hynde and Sheryl Crow for their feminine insights into the rock music world, Rod Stewart for his quixotic love ballads…..There are so many others….

So I try to take advantage of each day as it comes, to just roll with it…I am retired now, so at least I don’t have to deal with the 50 hour hole in my week from toiling in work world, where I spent 45 years in meaningless dead end jobs to support myself and my daughter as a single parent…I was all too happy to retire, to make the most of the time I have left…

So each day when I wake up, I pay any bills that roll in, I do my exercises, mostly walking, I play with my cat, and I write my blog….Then I post it on Word Press to express my ideas, my thoughts, my feelings, I am a very emotional person….After that I check in with my friends on face book, and then I play my music….On a good day I can play up to 2 hours a session, but I always try to squeeze in at least an hour, because something mystical and magical happens when I play music…

It is like time is suspended, there are no clocks, there is no sense of time, it is like that Leonard Russell song: “I love you in a place where there is no space and time,” hauntingly beautiful lyrics….But that is how I feel when I play my guitar and sing my own songs that I have written…

I feel exactly like that, there is only the music and the melody, and the words intertwine like lovers and make me feel whole and complete and it produces I guess what are called “alpha waves” in my brain, it is a similar state of mind like what you achieve through meditation, I am told…

Everything is beautiful and the cares and the worries of the day, all the bad things that may or may not happen become all irrelevant, and I am able to just relax and achieve an emotional catharsis from the sheer joy of playing my music….It sort of puts everything into perspective, and I always feel complete while I am playing and even after…..

I hope all of you have something similar in your lives, like my writing and music is for me, some safe place you can go to, somebody or something that makes it all alright…After all, we all have only this one day, today, to experience it and live our lives to the fullest….

I am enjoying my day, and I sincerely hope that you are enjoying your today as well….