June 27, 2019

Shebang: California Red Wine

It’s time for me to get back on schedule.  I’ve had a lot going on (not an excuse); the result has been a few dropped balls.  This blog had to take a backseat due to some travelling, summer camp, and just a crazy work schedule for a few weeks.

Hopefully, this will be the last hiatus for a while.

I’ll be catching you up on my travels next week; today I want to talk about a terrific California red wine and human nature.

I find there are generally two kinds of people. 

One is the person who likes life “as it is.”  They don’t love change, they are incredibly stable, they will continue to do the same things unless challenged.  These are the women who feel like a change of lipstick color is a drastic difference in their work wardrobe and consistently eat pizza every Friday night with the kids.  These types of people are so important.  They keep the rest of the world stable.  They are the planners and the “feet on the ground” people that I need in my world.

The second type of person is someone who needs a challenge.  They want to change something about their appearance?  How about pink hair or a new tattoo?  They’re always wondering what is beyond the next hill; they’re the entrepreneurs, the dreamers, the searchers.  The world needs these kinds of people, too.  Without them, we wouldn’t have the Internet, PayPal, or Tesla. 

Both types of people are important to the world.  Both are necessary to make business, family, friendships, or the world in general work. 

I am absolutely number two.  Some of my closest friends are number one; they’ve kept me from being completely crazy on more than one occasion.

As a person who needs a challenge (but who is also fiercely loyal and who will put myself through a lot of personal unhappiness for someone else), I’ve been learning over the last few months that I need to better define what I need from life.  One of those choices came to a musical group I was part of. 

I live to perform.  I love stepping on stage and sharing music with the world.  However, when a volunteer ensemble I’d been part of for over a decade had trouble filling seats in the audience, I found I wasn’t happy.  I stuck with it (probably longer than I should have) because I cared about the group and I cared about everyone else in the group.  Until we reached a point that it was embarrassing to perform.  (No performer likes an empty room.  It’s the thing of nightmares.)

To complicate the situation, I had picked up a contemporary Sunday morning gig about a year before.  That band had gone from passable to something amazing – not by hiring more professional musician (also an all-volunteer group), but because we were passionate about making music.  It kept getting better and attendance kept going up.  At the end of each service, someone said, “thank you for being here.” 

In my over-full world, I finally reached the point that I had to define what made me feel fulfilled.  The group I’d been with for 14 years wasn’t doing it.  Ultimately, we decided it was time to end that version of the group.

It was sad.  I’ll miss the members of the group; most are moving on to other things and don’t intend to come back to the reinvented version in the fall.  I cherish the memories and the experiences that made us all better musicians.  But it was time.  It could have continued without me; but for me, I had to focus on things that helped me feel fulfilled.

Shebang is an American word that means hut.  It was first used in the Civil War soldiers (and the poet Walt Whitman).  In slang, the “whole shebang” means everything.

It’s important to remember, as I drink this red wine, that I don’t throw out “the whole shebang.”  This wine is heavy, filled with strong tannins, the flavor of French oak, smoke, and leather.  It needs time to breathe before you drink (or decant). 

I need time (just like this wine) to reset and prepare.  I shouldn’t toss all the memories.  Instead, I should savor them, give them time to last, and let them accompany me on my next journey.  I wouldn’t be where I am today without that ensemble.  It prepared me for the next step in the journey.  It will always be part of my “whole shebang.”