Detroit wrote: ↑Mon Mar 01, 2021 3:39 pm
Irish wrote: ↑Mon Mar 01, 2021 3:14 pm
@Detroit Very cool story.....for real. I wish I had not succumbed to shedding the "band nerd" thing when I moved from NJ to PA. Yes, It allowed me to appear "cooler" but I missed out on a lot of good times as our high school band was FAR better at banding than our football team was at footballing.... speaking of balling, i would have gotten laid so much more had I been in band.... as the band traveled co-ed . I was also a much better musician than I was a foot ball player .....
PS I love what you did with that office/guest room..... and i LOVE THAT LAMP
I make it a point to regret nothing in life, and abandoning band in college at times makes me a bit sad to think about what I might have been able to accomplish musically and who I might have met, but it was absolutely the right call. I was a bit of a follower of sorts in high school. A number of my band friends were going to my college and joining the marching band, they were also music majors...and just not something I wanted anymore. They took it too seriously, and I had many people (including my band director) tell me that I needed to study music and that I had a bright future. Fucking REALLY!? I called
and just abandoned it all in an effort to distance myself from that nonsense. I certainly didn't want to be a starving artist my whole life. My closer friends abandoned band for engineering or other high achieving degrees at fancy schools, and I wanted to do the same and did. (fucking follower). I doubt I would have moved as much or done so much after college if I stayed in band...I probably would have had a strong social circle that kept me back. I wouldn't have been sad because I didn't know any better, but in hindsight I'm so glad that I made the decision I did.
What I didn't realize is that I probably could have figured out someway to keep playing and stay involved without going
Sounds like Dan did it this way, and I wish I had just so I kept my chops up. I don't even know if I can play anymore, and will probably never find out.
Taking these performance-based joys and going at them with 100% effort ends in brutal ways for 99% of people who try it. You're almost certainly better off for having not been a music major - WTF would you have done with that? But isn't it kind of disappointing to not play anymore? If it's something you really enjoyed it could still be fun to do dabble in even as an adult.
Personally I was obsessed with hockey back in high school. I sort of fell into playing it competitively as a fluke, though. A friend of mine was really good and was trying out for the AAA 18 and under travel team and told me to come out for tryouts sort of on a whim. I was 15 and had played nothing but house league to that point, but I went anyway. I had no business being on the ice with a bunch of mostly 17 and 18 year old guys who'd been playing at that level for years, but I was one of only two goalies to show up at tryouts and so I made the team by default. The other goalie on the team was a senior and I didn't play at all at the beginning of the year, but I worked my ass off each and every day and by the end of the year we were splitting games. I was the starting goaltender for that team my last two years in high school and had all these aspirations of playing in college. I had a stack of tryout invitations from Junior A and Junior B teams, thought I'd try that and see if I could turn that into a scholarship or something, but in the end I decided just to walk onto a D3 ACHA team in college.
Why? I didn't want to delay school to chase something that would likely never turn into anything. I'm 5'10", and if you've watched any professional hockey at all, you've probably noticed that a 6'1" goaltender is considered short these days. The guys in net are HUGE anymore. Best case I might've been a NCAA D3 or low level D1 athlete, then ended up in the beer leagues, just like I am now, but with 2 or 3 years of wasted time in junior in-between. Meh. I might not have married my wife who I met in high school had we not gone off to college together. Who knows? I'm super happy I went the route I did. I still had a lot of fun playing in college, but it didn't get in the way of the bigger picture. All roads lead to the beer leagues, whether it's college, the minors, or even the NHL.
But I will say, I'm very glad to still be playing. I absolutely love strapping the pads on, getting out on the ice each week, and stopping pucks. I still have a crazy passion for it, and I don't think I'll ever stop playing at some level as long as my body more or less holds up. I can always be a forward when the hips get too blown.