Taking Back Fridays

Today is an important day in my life. It is the first time in almost two and a half years I am not playing my bass somewhere on a Friday evening.

There are many reasons for this, but the most important one is that I wanted to experience more of what life has to offer right now.

Here is a list of the things I have missed for the past four plus years because I was fighting the good fight:

1. Countless events with my best friends, and even if I could make it I was always showing up when they are winding down.
2. Hanging with my brother and his wife out in Belleville.
3. Boatloads of networking opportunities with some of the people I play with.
4. The ability to just sit at home and watch a movie with a loved one on a Friday night.
   

So if you are reading this list correctly, I sacrificed the most importants things:

1. Friends
2. Family
3. Career
4. Me

Everyone at some point in their life comes face to face with reality. For me it was when I took this picture.

For years I played this service hoping to assist in its growth and outreach but sometimes the picture really does tell the story. This I recently took this picture at approximately 7:20 on a Friday evening. The service starts at 7:30. That one person in the middle there is my niece, who came with me. It was this exact moment when I took this picture that I realized some priorities in my life had to change.

When I first played Friday services four years ago, it wasn't the best but we worked at it and made it into something really special. Click on this link to read my other post and watch the video. That's what it was really like in this same room as the above picture.

I would like to give a special thanks to everyone in the band who really made it good for a while there. I would also like to thank singers Marsha and Ryan Robinson, and Junior Phillip for impacting my life and inspiring me to play hard. But on a personal level, I would really especially like to thank drummer Otis Williams for really making Fridays special to me while I was there. Together we helped to build it up just to watch it go down the crapper.

To close, I wish the people who serve on Friday all the best in their endeavors. I'm sure I'll be available to play on a Friday from time to time, but tonight I'll be out with my niece eating sushi, in a room that has people in it.