I may not have been born yet when the late, great, Buddy Miles sang about Them Changes but I like to think I know what he was singing about.  Change is all there is, nothing ever really stays the same, not exactly, even in the most humdrum and repetitive phases of our lives.  Even though this is true and all things are always in flux, it’s very easy as a passenger through linear time to see certain events and choices, times and seasons, as if they are the starts and ends of chapters in a book.  A birth, a death, a move to a new home, a new city, a change in career, the end of a relationship or start of a romance, these are the easy markers, the ones that have dates and names attached.  Most of our lives, however, are lived in the interstices between those big changes.  

That is all as it should be.  Major changes are exhausting and (typically) somewhat rare.  We see them as major because they alter the day to day reality of our lives in some sort of on-going way and if that were happening every day or week or month I don’t know how I’d survive it.  You have to have at least a few days here or there to stop and read a book and eat a sandwich in peace, right?

The last phase/chapter of my life has been a bit of a mixed bag.  As I’ve written here before, I have floundered creatively, struggled to find my mojo, wrestled with a lot of self-doubt and a lack of ambition about the future.  The Trump era and the pandemic were not uniquely hard on me, I know that, but they came at an inopportune time in my life and more than once I found myself on the ropes, psychologically.  But hey, I’m still here, I’m still happening.

And that’s what I want to say today.  I’m still here and I’ve got irons in the fire again and it feels good.

One way to create change when I feel like I am mired down is to make a physical change to the environment.  So, several weeks back, I decided the time had come to create the workspace for the next phase of things.  I emptied out my basement studio, and went at it with a crowbar, popping floor tiles left and right.  Picked out some new paint colors (goodbye white, hello copper and blue), and started intentionally designing the new space.  I wanted the space to be a multi-use space which could be easily configured for home office, VR/gaming, recording sessions, video shoots, or as a home movie theater.  It’s a large space, 400+ square feet, with a small kitchenette area, so it can accommodate a lot of flexibility.  I decided that a hardwood floor would be important (bought cheap at online auction) and also decided that every major piece of furniture in the space needed to be on wheels (I have learned much about casters over the last month) or at least sliders.  

The room is absolutely coming together.  The majority of the hardwood is installed, the walls are painted, the A/V setup is progressing, there is a fantastic new desk/workspace, I’ve got a huge room divider curtain wall, smart lighting, new cabinets in the kitchenette area, it’s turning into quite the setup.  Watched some movies down there last night and it’s absolutely epic.  I have a bit of work ahead of me still, quite a bit, but I’m motivated by the release of the new album, the relaunch of Nuclear Gopher as a label, and a number of related plans I’m not ready to talk about here yet.  The space is taking longer to come together than I had hoped but it is already pretty dang usable and looking great.  Recording sessions will be commencing this month.  

As I’ve been spending evenings and weekends renovating and reconfiguring, divesting myself of old furniture and items that no longer serve any purpose, I’ve begun to feel a bit of my old self.  One of my favorite sayings, usually credited to Alan Kay of Xerox PARC fame, is “The best way to predict the future is to invent it.”  I know the kind of future I want to inhabit.  I know that I feel good in the present when I spend time creating changes.  I know that our actions can create our feelings as directly as our feelings can spur us to actions.  Working a plan to change my life into the life I want to be living doesn’t have to involve some dramatic gesture or massive disruption.  It can start by writing some things, installing a floor, drawing some sketches of future ideas, getting a bit dirty and sweaty, digging in, building a wall a brick at a time.  There is no guarantee that my ideas will succeed or that the changes I am working on will bring wealth, joy, and inner satisfaction, but it feels right to be doing something.  I’m instigating a series of changes, moving into a transitional state to some new things, and I am more capable, more intentional, and more mindful about this than I have ever been at any previous stage in my life.  

I often say that “hope” is a four letter word (I am the writer of Pessimist Song, after all), so I’m not going to pin any hopes on this next phase.  Let’s just say instead that I am excited to get on the next ride in the amusement park, see what thrills it has in store for me.  Renovating a room is just a project, but it represents an investment in a future I want to create in which I DO create.  From that perspective, it’s vitally important and every piece of flooring I install takes me one step closer to that reality.  I have a future to invent.