mid-life correction

i have one of the greatest counselors that has ever walked the planet in Dr. Pete Hutchings.  a few years back we had a conversation in which i expressed the frustration that i believed my soul was dying.  i believe my exact words were, “Pete, i feel like my soul is dying.”

the cause of my frustration has played itself out over the course of the lives of just about every man (and most women) to ever reach a certain age in their lives.  had i much more money than brains and more libido than fear of complications, i would have been divorced and driving a shiny midnight blue (i’m not crazy about red) sports car by now, but i don’t have that kind of money and have always ruled my marriage with that fear of complications thing.

the bottom line to a mid-life crisis is that one has not reached the level of accomplishment he/she thought he/she could achieve when he/she was younger.  for me, i turned around one day and thought, “this can’t be my life, i’m supposed to be a rock star and a famous writer and here i am … i’m stuck in the corporate world, at home with a needy family and a pile of bills … this was not what i had planned.”

the truth is i never really had plan at all until recently.  that plan is what Dr. Hutchings (Pete, as I call him) calls a mid-life correction.  i’ve spent the last couple of years trying hard to adjust both my goals and my lifestyle to go after those things that will make me the man i was always supposed to be.  the important factor here is that both things had to be adjusted, my goals(expectations) and my lifestyle(behavior).

so, i got back on the horse where music is concerned and started playing something on the guitar just about every day.  i got very serious with my writing, started writing poetry again and am currently finishing up my first novel.

i realized not too long ago that it wasn’t enough for me to just play my music and write.  the soul needs much more nourishment than that, especially in a time of crisis/correction.  i pray daily … really, almost hourly.   i also read … a voluminous amount … everything from Rumi to Stephen King with The Bible, The Bhagavad Gita, The Tao Teh Ching, and folks like Marianne Williamson thrown in for good spiritual measure.  a short list of authors can be found on my myspace and facebook profiles.

i’ve been working a plan for the last couple of years.  my wife is going back to school, my oldest son just graduated high school, my youngest just started high school.  my plan is to leave the corporate world once my wife finishes with school and is pursuing her career.  by then, my kids will be out of the house and the fear of failure won’t weigh on me as heavily.

there’s an old Yiddish proverb, “We plan, God laughs,” and that is appropriate here.  my plan was kicked into high gear by the choices made by my superiors at Siemens when they laid me off back in March 2008.  the basic plan (and my mission statement) is:

to use every gift that God has given me to bring in income to support my family while at the same time loving what i’m doing for a living.  i have higher purposes in this plan as well.  there are many charities to which i belong and wish to support more from a monetary perspective..

so, what are these gifts?  well, i’m a writer, a singer-songwriter, a multi-intstrumentalist musician, an actor and an entrepeneur just to name a few.  my intention is to use every one of these gifts to support my family and to make the world a better place.  that’s why this site is called Fire on All Cylinders!  i have used my gifts sporadically through the years and some in the corporate world, but have never done everything i could do at one time and that is what is happening right now.

for details on each gift and my progress, keep checking back and clicking the appropriate links.