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Today I asked my mom if she’d be okay with us selling her father’s 1960’s Wurlitzer organ, that has been sitting unused and neglected in my parents’ basement. Selling the organ is not new news, but the reality of selling it finally hit her when I told her this morning that we might have a prospective buyer.

I understand the sentimental ties to the organ. I feel them, too, even though I was a wee young lad when my grandfather died. I have no memory of him prior to his first stroke. But I also understand that, as life runs its course, all things come to an end; and all things pass on, move on, continue on – life continues as life dies.

And so, to me, the organ is better in the hands of another, as we say goodbye to something that was useful to us at one time, long ago, and brought our family such joy, but has now laid dormant for over a decade. We recognize that to give it to someone else means that the organ actually increases in value – not decreases – as others are allowed to make memories with it and it becomes a part of others’ lives.

Saying goodbye to an organ doesn’t mean saying goodbye to the memories created by it.

Yes, Megan laughed when I said to her this evening, “Baby, I’m running on a full tank of ambition,” but do you want to know something? Her laugh didn’t bother me too much. Actually, it didn’t bother me at all. I feel recharged, renewed, refreshed, and ready to go for it – again…

Over the past couple of days, I have been inspired by reading Josh Ritter’s blog on called Making a Life in Music. Here’s a link to it: http://www.bookofjubilations.com/2010/10/making-life-in-music-vol-1-were-all.html

It’s for songwriters who, pretty much, want to do what he does. I guess he does music “full-time” and “for a living”, but I’ve never asked. But he certainly seems popular enough for that to be the case.

Anyway, so Josh’s blog has been inspiring, and I’ve already to put in to practice some of the things that he has recommended to up-and-coming songwriters.

Over the last few years, I have tried a number of record-keeping techniques to help me stay focused and help me continue to move forward. But somewhere along the line, my methods lost their effectiveness, I got out of rhythm, or my circumstances changed and I was no longer able to use whatever system I had developed…

One thing that Josh recommends is buying a nice notebook and writing down your goals – ten years out, five years out, two years out, one year out, six months out, next week, and tomorrow. The first chance I got I ran down to the local bookstore and bought a Moleskine. (I’ve never owned one before, but I felt cooler just writing in it the first time.)

One more big thing he mentions about your goals: never show them to anybody else. I’m not sure why that is, exactly, but that was his recommendation, and I guess I can see why – a little. To me, it’s probably because they are your own private thoughts and other people might not see the world how you do. They might try to mess with your mind, your aspirations, your emotions, or whatever. And so I’m going to try to take his advice.

So far, I’ve been most impressed simply by Josh’s method for going about “making a life in music”. Another one of his basic premises is that a career in music blooms out of a music community. You don’t do music in a bubble. You pursue it and succeed with others – musicians, friends, other songwriters…

Onward and upward…