The Entertainer

I’m going to learn The Entertainer. Every time I hear it or see someone play it in a movie, I always think to myself, I’ll learn that one day! I’m about to turn 38 and still havent learned it. Why have I never sat down to learn it? I’ve always wanted to? Why am I waiting? Sure, in the grand scheme of life, it won’t really matter if I ever learn The Entertainer. But it’s something I want to do. Even a little desire should be a clue for me to head in that direction. It’s time.

I wasn’t a great athlete. I played a lot of sports when I was a kid, but my genetics come from people who love food and not running. I have a strange innate talent for balancing things and aiming, but not for swiftness. I had to get my insatiable need for attention from being good at other things like music, drawing, and random circus tricks. To do this, I had to lean into learning quite a bit.

Stress comes from so many directions at once: money, work, family, children, houses, or the lack of these stressors. The heartbeats still count down, never ending…until it ends. Time will pass. I will suffer. These two truths rule our existence. But I’m trying to remember the third god in the trinity of life truths. I will experience Joy.

So many things bring me joy. My family, friends, pets, playing and writing music, drawing, hiking, disc golf, traveling, photography. The list is unending. The two things that bring me some of the most consistent joy is learning and making. When I am in these things deep with the exuberance that only comes with a recovering ADHDer, I find flow and all the sorrows seem to melt away. They don’t even come back immediately after I come out of flow. There is an afterglow that rests on my soul from these activities, like a runners high (or so I’ve heard).

This year I realized that when I stop making, drawing, writing, and learning, the darkness descends on me. I start seeing all the bad in the world clearly. I become my own drain, swirling around the black sewage pipe of dread. Doom scrolling becomes my master, and hatred my love language.

I am actively trying to counteract that with projects. Medium to large creative endeavors that I can sink my teeth into for weeks or months at a time in response to the unfairness of the world. This blog being one of them. Just having a weekly creative outlet for my writing is changing my life. It’s small and achievable and I feel better when I’m done. I’m learning to accept that every post isn’t going to be some earth shattering well of knowledge for unsuspecting strangers in Ireland. It’s possible that none of the posts will ever achieve that. And that has to be okay or I’ll never make anything.

There is nothing at stake, so I do it for the sake. My sake. And if someone else gets something from it, then I get to experience that much more joy. I have to stop worrying so much about the skill issue and more about the will issue. Yes, I’m going to learn The Entertainer, not to impress my buddies, but because it’s old fashioned fun.