These stories that drive home the point of music being real, actual work make me laugh about something I did on Facebook once.

Some guy, a lower tier player, posted a gig notice for his awful band and I watched as over the next few days people were posting the thumbs up icons, the smiley faces, the hearts... All of those inane, nonsensical icons. So, of course I couldn't leave that alone.

I put up stock pictures of some guy mowing a lawn and asked "Where is THIS guy's thumbs up icons? And his hearts, and his smiley faces? After all, he is doing HIS job just like the musicians who get all the icons are doing theirs."

And I went on to rage against the nobody and wannabe types who think there is something magical or mystical about playing a gig. It's just another night of doing what we do. It's another night at work. There is nothing different between playing a gig at some bar or going to your metal fab shop and doing some pristine, complicated welding, other than the welding may pay better.

WHY do people do that? I really don't get it.

If you go into your life already convincing yourself that and 9-5 job will suck, it will. I LOVED working in IT. I just didn't like GOING to work, getting up at 6, showering, drying all this hair, putting on dress casual clothes... But the work was actually fun. I worked with so many people who came to work already hating the day because they hated their life. I finally learned that I just have to accept that there are people who choose to live in a world where it rains every day.

It still amuses me when I talk to people who think it is some badge of courage to say that they never had a real job. They are the same people who had to live with 3 other grown men until they were 50 because they couldn't support themselves. If I had to do that out of necessity I would probably have swallowed the barrel of a gun. Talk about levels of failure when you can't afford your own place at 50 years of age!

But yeah! Let's give those thumbs up icons because some awful musicians are play in a dumpy bar for $200 on Saturday night.

I literally had death threats over that thread.

It honestly makes me sad when I am having a conversation with someone and the topic of hobbies comes up. I am a better than average woodworker. I am a really good cook. I am great with computers. I wrote a well received blog for a couple of years before I got bored with it. I am 33,500 words into a book. I can fix cars. I can backyard engineer with the best of them. But let me mention music and I get "Oh wow!!! You're in a BAAAAAAAAAND??" Man, it's just one thing I know how to do! People who are so singular in focus that they are worth nothing to the world outside of playing music simply annoy me. I know about a half dozen of those borderline idiot savants.

I prefer people who can honestly say that it is them as a person who brings light to the world, not things they have learned to do out of shear repetition. During Covid time when we had no sports, out of sheer boredom I watched a cornhole tournament. I lasted maybe 20 minutes with it. And I said out loud to nobody "Wow. THIS is your contribution to society? Throwing a cloth bag full of beans through a hole in a board?"

But somebody somewhere will probably think that deserves a thumbs up icon!!