I have not posted here in 2 years

No one ever reads this blog even though I have put a link on Facebook. Maybe it needs another link...

Update: Curtiss OK, no cancer return, but still residual pain.
I'm more or less not OK. Not to have a pity party, but I am stressed to the max. Between worry about Curtiss' physical and mental well-being, my finances (we are only just getting by thanks to my stringent efforts at economizing, which means that indulgences are rare and every purchase must be justified.) Also my own health--for once I am free of uveitis, no longer taking tamoxifen, but one thing about aging is that it always seems to cause little pieces of bricks and mortar to crumble so that eventually the entire edifice collapses. I suspect that I have nascent arthritis in my hands and my left hip. I have had various tooth mishaps lately (crown for back molar, chipped front tooth) probably hastened by the fact that I ground my teeth while sleeping since I was a tot, and have thereby weakened whatever enamel still remains. I get this picture of myself in a few years as a cartoon character whose teeth become covered with cracks and then fall apart like a windshield.

I am also stressed by the fact that my book on comping is nowhere near complete and I have allowed the editor to place me under the gun to finish by April 1, 2011. Even though i realize that it doesn't matter if the book is published in 2011 or 2012. It matters for Berklee press because I am costing them money until it is ready to be sold.
Wage slavery...

And, last but not least, there is the economy which continues to suck for all musicians. I had a meltdown the other night during which I chastised myself repeatedly for ever becoming a musician when I could have gone to grad school and had a real career of some kind. In what other field do you make less money than you did 30 years ago? Back then it was $50 plus a meal or a drink and it's still that today, which in 2010 dollars probably amounts to almost nothing. I don't need to elaborate on the obvious never-ending frustration and gnashing of teeth (teeth again) over the minimally talented musicians who have successfully stoked the star maker machine while I languish in oblivion because I wasted 19 years playing at the Four Seasons and not promoting myself. And now I'm too old to get another career, so I am stuck with a last-ditch attempt to launch myself on my own petard. Poor little me.