Taking Back My Life

Another Brick In The Wall

Let me preempt this by saying something I have never spoken openly on Substack before. The breaking I talk about did not happen overnight. It happened during the years of Covid when I isolated myself in my home for almost three years. I refused to be vaccinated, but I also refused to risk an infection that might have taken my life. That isolation, that distance from human beings, did something to my mind and my spirit. I did not see it clearly at the time. I only felt the slow collapse.

Back in the late sixties, when I was a touring rock musician, life was exactly what you would imagine. Music. Women. Stages. And yes, plenty of drugs and alcohol floating around. I never saw myself as an addict or an alcoholic. What I did see in the people around me, then and later in life, was struggle. Pain. A desire to feel whole. Recently I found myself returning to twelve step meetings, not because I relapsed, but because there is a simple human honesty in those rooms. People there have suffered in ways familiar to me, and that sense of shared history has been good for my soul.

With that said, here is what I want to offer you today.

Even in the middle of my so-called financial stress, I made a few purchases instead of hiding from life. I returned to meetings without absorbing any of the dogma. I took only the support. And I bought my first concert ticket in eight years. I am going to see Joe Jackson in 2026.

This feels like the beginning of my return to the music I love. The man came in as a new wave oddball, but today he stands as a true artist. I look forward to seeing him at the Parker Playhouse in Fort Lauderdale. It is a small and intimate theater. The kind of place where only real fans show up. Not twenty thousand people. Just the people who came to listen.

I bought one ticket. I thought about buying two, but then I imagined myself holding that second ticket in my hand wondering who I should bring. The truth is simpler. I used to go to concerts alone all the time. It allowed me to express myself the way I wanted to without worrying whether the person next to me was uncomfortable with my exuberance when the music hit. So I am going alone, and I am going free.

This is one more brick back in place. We never break in big dramatic pieces. We do not collapse in one direction. We break quietly, piece by piece, losing small parts of ourselves until there is not much left. And then, when life allows it, we start putting the pieces back.

I am taking back my life.