The Lost Spring

2021 has been a hard year for me. I will explain it in a nutshell, because these days I don’t have time to fill anything larger than a nutshell. 

 

It has been one of unexpected hardships. My oldest has had… challenges, challenges that have gotten worse this year. On our third therapist, we didn’t get a diagnosis before I had to discontinue his therapy due to scheduling conflicts, but I’ll come back to my schedule. 

 

I can’t get recognition for the difficulty without giving up more information than I am comfortable with, but I think the trauma from the accident runs deeper and has more far-reaching effects than I could have imagined. And something else is at play, too. It’s been hard, the kind of hard where sometimes you just want to talk away from it all. 

 

That’s bad enough. But let me turn the clocks back. To, let’s say, Easter. 

 

The past few spring seasons, I have relished the opportunity to be inspired by new beginnings, brisk hiking weather, and life-affirming music. On Easter Sunday, I took a long drive through the hills to get my thoughts together. At that time, I was reaching out to people from past places I’d lived, but this time it really felt like I was on the verge of some sort of grand revival. Something was awakening. I was starting a movement of long-distance social interaction by video, and it went hand-in-hand with other optimistic aspects of what I was up to. 

 

Partly in an effort to battle my ow despair, I had become an agent of hope, intending on uplifting others. Embracing an earlier nickname of the White Mage. It was time to live the life I always wanted. Composing albums for sale, enjoying all the little things my current time and place had to offer, and especially investing in friendships. No more disasters. Spring had come into my life. 

 

But then, as if being punished for declaring my hopeful designs, the Hand of Fate swiftly reached out to knock over my house of cards and put me in my place.  

 

Wait, this is not a nutshell. I don’t have time for this kind of relatability. 

 

Much like the weather, spring lasted but a few days. 2021 had no interest in delivering what was expected. 

 

It became clear that we simply weren’t going to be able to pick up our entertainment business where we’d left off before the pandemic. Things were different. Our time management demands were extremely different. Our employees had left. The landscape itself had changed. And some of you fucks just couldn’t be bothered to wear a mask, thus dragging out the process. Anti-masker stubbornness, in part, killed my dreams. Yes, that’s how I see it. And I am damned angry about it. You couldn’t just all cooperate. No. It was too much for you. 

 

The governor pulled the rug out from under us, ending unemployment benefits a few months earlier than we were counting on. So, we more or less abandoned the business and I immediately was thrust into the personal hell of job-searching with a weak resume. The same hell from 2008-9, and all its unresolved anxiety, back to the forefront. Except now I have a wife and two kids. 

 

I’m not going to go into that. You wouldn’t understand. But that was my summer: a roller coaster of trying to psych myself up for a dramatically different lifestyle every couple of days, only to be consistently rejected and remain where I was. Running on fumes. My self-confidence eroding. My mental health deteriorating.  

 

We canceled our July plans to visit family. It would have been great. We would have driven up to Missouri on the 7^thand stayed for a week or more. That, I fell, was stolen from me. 

 

The Fourth of July was the only bright spot. We had a humble bonfire meal before setting off our own fireworks, with my wife’s sister’s family joining us. It only worked because my sister-in-law funded it. It was a nice time, and the kids had fun. 

 

The summer was lost because spring never happened. 

 

And then summer turned to fall. 

 

I did whatever I could. Even my own wife doesn’t believe me on that point, so I’m not even going to try to plead my case. Let’s just say I’ve been busy. But it feels like it’s been one big snipe hunt. 

 

It’s been a bad year. A hard year. Discouraging, demanding, and lonely. 

 

2021 has been, for me, worse than 2020. Let that sink in. 

 

Two days after Halloween, giving up all pretense of possibly making the Missouri trip for Christmas, I started a new job. A blue-collar job that doesn’t fit me at all, but I make it work. But halfway through my first shift, they told me, contrary to what the recruiter and the orientation manager told me, that it was mandatory 50-hour work weeks. Ten hours a day every day, plus optional Saturday mornings. And it’s not the sort of place that takes no for an answer, so I had to immediately scramble to reschedule my last two remaining piano students. I will cling to them for sure. And the occasional weekend gig that my wife books for me. 

 

But that’s a hell of a schedule for my wife, chronically exhausted, dealing with an overactive homeschool kid plus a toddler, all on her own, in a house that is still an unfinished DIY project from before the first time she got cancer. I get up at 4:30am and listen to complaints, criticism, and back-biting all day long, draining my reserves of patience and tolerance, only to come home to that. 

 

It’s survival. My dreams are on ice, and I feel like I’m not me. 

 

Then I found something else. I applied for this other job, but it looks like they don’t want me. Again. But I will tell you about it anyway. 

 

It’s a job that I would thrive in. A job where I would be using my niche skills, feeling good about myself as a professional musician, and serving other musicians and the community in the process. I’ve never encountered an open position like this before, and shockingly, the office is literally right across the street from the factory where I work. Oh, the sense of satisfaction and accomplishment I could have if only I worked there instead.

 

I would be an audio engineer and chart maker for an app that helps synchronize Christian worship bands around the globe, giving them a vast musical library to work with. I would be analyzing and editing songs all day long, refitting them for layering multi-tracks as needed by the user. I would be using my highly-trained ear and a digital audio workstation. I would be doing what I love to do anyway, just in an unexpected genre of worship music. But, given the nature of the music, I couldn’t help but think of the poetic justice of tying my current life back to the frustrating feelings of unresolved goals from when I lived in Kansas City and was involved with the kind of church that would have used this. All those friends have forgotten me, as I’ve blogged about before. But I could be quite distinguished in that setting now. 

 

But I don’t have that job. It would have immediately, immeasurably improved all aspects of my life, schedule, and mental health. But it was another mirage. Then again, the new office building looks too new, and the other slots are empty, so maybe they just haven’t opened yet. I called them, and they called back but didn’t leave a voicemail. 

 

I feel like the whole year, one canceled plan at a time, was stolen from me. I call 2021 the Lost Spring. The season of renewal in my life that was supposed to happen, but never came. And now, things are worse. Much worse. 

 

Thanksgiving is over, and so begins the home stretch. For some of you, perhaps you are still working towards some as-yet-unfulfilled New Year’s resolutions. It’s crunch time for you. I wish you the best. For me, I am cutting my losses and mentally gearing up for 2022 instead. I have to figure out if and how I can make next year, as a unit, an auspicious turn. 

 

It was a mistake to spend the time it took to even write this, and now I must pay the price.