Activities through life
childhood - better than average student, pretty good hobbyist model builder
teens - just average student, better than average guitar player and beginner songwriter
20s - poor college student, improved on guitar and songwriting and took up landscaping and was consistent but not natural green thumb at first
30s - strong college/grad school student, decent IT person, guitar playing went downhill from lack of practice
40s - guitar playing getting better, took up skateboarding and suck at it but enjoy it very much and it's the most challenging thing since I have no natural ability at it compared to younger set
Overall, I would say I am an average Joe since I never really took up my first love, music, to a professional level, nor did I study music in college. The rest of my activities have been jobs and school, with the goal of getting things done OK and on time without great need to procrastinate. What's been liberating is that I no longer think that I am something way out of the ordinary musically since I play and sing just OK, so now I can enjoy it and not feel like I have to compete.
From literally hundreds of local musicians I have met, worked with, and watched in my county of 300,000 people, I have only seen one reach any national attention and break the top 200 charts a few times. However, for such a large county geographically, but rather small population wise, it was a treat for musicians and fans to have two top 10 American Idol finalists join the same church in town and join the choir. Church went from 40 people to over 4,000 people and got national attention. Even non religious people, but rampant American Idol fans, drive from all over to see them sing. BTW, their names are Mandisa and George Huff, so that was surreal for two pretty big names to hang out in such a rural area. If somebody like Adam Lambert or Ruben Studdard, or a real established musical superstar, moved here and joined some choir or long term theater project, it would literally clog our small roadways.
We have had a famous writer John Steinbeck, filmmaker and screenwriter Luis Valdez, and a pretty famous PGA golfer in the 1980s, but otherwise, really good and nationally known people in their field do not usually come from here or get "discovered" here as we are just collections of sleepy hamlets between ambitious SF and LA.
childhood - better than average student, pretty good hobbyist model builder
teens - just average student, better than average guitar player and beginner songwriter
20s - poor college student, improved on guitar and songwriting and took up landscaping and was consistent but not natural green thumb at first
30s - strong college/grad school student, decent IT person, guitar playing went downhill from lack of practice
40s - guitar playing getting better, took up skateboarding and suck at it but enjoy it very much and it's the most challenging thing since I have no natural ability at it compared to younger set
Overall, I would say I am an average Joe since I never really took up my first love, music, to a professional level, nor did I study music in college. The rest of my activities have been jobs and school, with the goal of getting things done OK and on time without great need to procrastinate. What's been liberating is that I no longer think that I am something way out of the ordinary musically since I play and sing just OK, so now I can enjoy it and not feel like I have to compete.
From literally hundreds of local musicians I have met, worked with, and watched in my county of 300,000 people, I have only seen one reach any national attention and break the top 200 charts a few times. However, for such a large county geographically, but rather small population wise, it was a treat for musicians and fans to have two top 10 American Idol finalists join the same church in town and join the choir. Church went from 40 people to over 4,000 people and got national attention. Even non religious people, but rampant American Idol fans, drive from all over to see them sing. BTW, their names are Mandisa and George Huff, so that was surreal for two pretty big names to hang out in such a rural area. If somebody like Adam Lambert or Ruben Studdard, or a real established musical superstar, moved here and joined some choir or long term theater project, it would literally clog our small roadways.
We have had a famous writer John Steinbeck, filmmaker and screenwriter Luis Valdez, and a pretty famous PGA golfer in the 1980s, but otherwise, really good and nationally known people in their field do not usually come from here or get "discovered" here as we are just collections of sleepy hamlets between ambitious SF and LA.
