Had a chance to catch up with my friend Glenda tonight. We’ve known each other for years but erratic work/travel schedules rarely put us in the same city so it’s a nice when it actually happens. We know each other from the usual web world but mostly bond on a shared musical history – having a fondness for the post hard core. Chances are mentioning Seam or Texas is the Reason or Hot Water Music around us will result in endless stories and back-in-the-day-isms.

Tonight while flaunting my Bitch Magnet vinyl, we started talking about figuring out those things about yourself that get lost over time. Those bits and pieces that for one reason get put on a shelf in the back of your head only to be forgotten. The music that at one point in your life you would hunt down and obsess over but at some point life got too hectic and you stopped making time to hunt it. The activities that defined you and motivated you that got put on hold at some point never to be picked up again. The behaviors you felt you should drop or adopt because that’s what everyone around you expected. The thoughts you used to speak freely but then started keeping to yourself because you didn’t want your opinion to reflect on your friends, significant others, bosses, or maybe even yourself. We all do this to some extent, if we’re lucky we realize it before it’s too late.

But what is too late really? Waking up one day and looking around at your life and wondering how you got there because it’s not anything you hoped for, I’d say that definitely too late. When you’ve made so many concessions that trying to undo them would be more trouble than just living with them, that’s probably too late as well. Anything else is fair game and figuring out what those things are is often much harder than changing them.

I know for myself anytime I’ve realized I’m doing it the fix was easy, the hard part was admitting to myself I’d let it happen in the first place. People I swore I’d be close to for the rest of my life but hadn’t talked to in year. Bands that changed my life but I couldn’t remember the last time I listened to them. Remembering all the hardcore anthems about being yourself and standing up while biting my tongue because I didn’t want to come off like an ass. I think to some extent it’s good to see yourself doing that, because then you at least have the option to change it. Many folks never realize it. I don’t really know where this rant is headed, nor a solution for it, it’s just reassuring to know you aren’t the only one fighting these demons sometimes.