Category: News

Some of you know that I have a little problem called tendinitis. I’ve been told that I have both “golfer’s elbow” and “tennis elbow”, which is to say, the tendons on the top and bottom sides of my upper forearm are wacked. I’ve been given two solutions, by two different sports medicine people:

1) “Build fortresses on your arms.” Meaning: lift weights and build strong shoulder muscles, because the rest of the arms depend on strong shoulders. The other problems will soon go away.

2) “You need to constantly massage your arms.” Meaning: hire an Asian woman with some strong hands.

Well, I say all this to say that I probably shouldn’t be typing any more today. My tendinitis is flaring up. I’ll probably try and rub them out tonight, and probably pop some pills, too, to try and pull the swelling down. Toodles.

I think we all have had someone whom we highly respect challenge us to do something. For me, I often come back to a single challenge that was made to me when I was a freshman in college. I was asked, “Are you a songwriter?” I answered, “Yes, of course.” My professor replied, “Do you write every day?” I responded, “No.” He looked at me funny, paused, and finally made a statement similar to this one:

“If you’re a songwriter, you should be writing music every day – no exceptions. If you’re a songwriter, making music would be as important to you as breath, as food, as life. You would *have* to do it, just like you *have* to breathe.”

I thought about what he said for a minute, and I responded with less clarity than I now state:

“I *am* a songwriter, and I *should* write more than I do. It’s difficult to write a song, and it’s more difficult to write *every* day. And just because something is difficult for you to do doesn’t mean that you’re not meant to do it. In fact, I’d say that anybody who is any good at anything works hard to get that way.”