NAHUA

At twenty-five, I had an overwhelming existential crisis. I was a college graduate with a degree that was (and is) widely considered to be useless. (It’s a bachelor’s in English, emphasis in creative writing, if you must know.) I was playing drums in a band that hadn’t yet toured, with very little reason to think that said band would evolve into the full-time gig that it did. And I was working forty to fifty hours a week in the pro shop of a local golf course, wearing polo shirts and khakis from 5 a.m. to 2 p.m. so that wealthy golfers could treat me like the lackey I was.

While I was trying to do “the band thing,” which involved being single and bouncing back and forth between nondescript apartments and, when money got a little tight, my parents’ house, many of my friends and former classmates were getting married, having kids, starting families, and buying houses. As a child, I’d always thought I’d be doing something similar; that, by 25, I’d have a job, a wife, a house, and a kid or two. Because that’s what my parents had done, and what my friends’ parents had done, and because…that’s just what you did, right?

I hadn’t done that. I’d failed.

Or at least that’s what I thought.

Trying to explain to a friend’s father (or to anyone, for that matter) that you’re eager to quit your shitty job at a golf course so that you can travel around the country in a broken-down van that your band bought for two grand so that you and your bandmates can play shows in front of crowds that, for the most part, care more about staring at the floor than they do about the music you’re playing…

Explaining that is a hard sell. It’s a hard sell that’s met with a lot of furrowed brows, and chuckles, and a repeated chorus of, “Hmm. Well…OK….good luck with that.”

It’s not the most encouraging scenario. Especially when the voices in your head are saying something similar.

To cope, I worried. Every show was life or death. Every interaction during which I thought I might have to “prove my existential worth” to someone was a panic attack waiting to happen. And despite the unwavering support I received from family and friends, every day was a struggle. Not so much in an “I am destitute and broke and lost” kind of way, but in a “What the hell am I doing with myself?” kind of way.

Thankfully, via hard work, perseverance (read: stubbornness), and a few strokes of good luck, things did work out. “The band thing” became a career, and brought me more satisfaction (both creatively and financially) than I would ever have dreamed. That band and I toured the world, made some (in my biased opinion) fantastic records, recorded in fancy studios, made big-budget videos, heard our songs on the radio, had videos played on MTV, shared the stage with bands I’d grown up loving, and made lifelong friends along the way.

And now…now it’s gone. “The band thing” as I’ve come to know it over the past thirteen years, is done. The touring, the writing and recording, the dream that became a career, all…done. Maybe for a while. Maybe for good. It’s not really my choice to make.

So now, on the heels of turning 37, I’m back where I was at 25. Nervous. Anxious. Overwhelmed. Still concerned that I’m not married, with kids, with home. Still armed with the useless English degree, and still dreading the conversations in which I have to justify my existence to the doubters (one of whom, depending on the type of day I’m having) might be myself.

G Y M