J3, I wasn't "not encouraged". I was DIScouraged. My own family members continued to try and tell me why I needed a job from 9-5 and then somehow find time to practice alone, rehearse with a band, and gig 5 nights a week. All because THEY grew up in a world with a timecard and a lunch bucket. Constantly harping. Calling me during the day to find a way to get around to the subject, telling me about jobs they found in the paper for me. I replied every time "I have a job. I am a musician.", and hung up the phone. Finally I quit talking to them. Both parents are now long since gone but the one sister I have, who hated that I found some level of success in music and she went nowhere in life (having been groomed in the 50s and 60s school of thought where the females were supposed to somehow finish high school, find a man, have babies, and stay home - EXACTLY what she did) I have not spoken to in 16 years. I am so glad that societal paradigm changed, or a lot of intelligent, talented women would have never had the opportunity to bloom.

In my world, college was for the rich kids. I had to go into the Army to get the GI Bill to attend college. I ALMOST fell into the trap where your environment dictates your future, like the inner city teaches now. Kids that see nothing but poverty and unemployment can easily assume that there is no other option, that it never gets any better. As far as your assertion that I felt like I was entitled to encouragement, that is ridiculous. Nobody is entitled to anything. Never were. That is a 2000s word and I came up in the 50s and 60s. However, in the same breath, is not the duty of parents to try and help their kids become all they can be? To give them the space to choose their own path and urge them to excel? I had none of that. Had I bought into their program I would have worked in a dead end job for 45 years and then retired in the lower middle class.

So to boil that all down, as I said before, you can say that in a very real way, my source of encouragement was discouragement, though motivation is a better word.

Last edited by eddie1261; 08/16/17 04:23 PM.