Write as if your life depended upon it. That's basically it, isn't it? And I don't do it. I get home and after several hours, I count how many hours that I'd been home and still hadn't touched a guitar or worked on anything. I'm not pushing what I want to do to its limits.

It was in high school when I first heard about 4-track tape recorders. My friend, physics teacher, and activities advisor for "Jazz/Rock" had a Fostex X-15 and he let me borrow it. I tried my hand at making a multi-track recording and when I finished something, I let him hear it. He was frank about it, "You haven't starved enough", he said.

I don't know how I responded, but I knew what he meant, and I knew he meant it as encouragement, rather than veiled-dismissal. I don't remember, but I'm sure I was quickly burying hurt feelings.

Those words never left me, but I've never acted on the meaning of those words, and many years to come ended up many years squandered. Those words should have been a wake-up call, a seminal slogan that I should have written down on pieces of paper and taped to all my schoolbooks, my locker, my room, my dorm rooms, my guitar cases, and every mirror I had to face in a day.

I don't need to write anymore. I don't even have to do music. I have no delusions of accomplishing anything, or even forming a band for that matter. I don't even think I'm capable of writing like my life depended on it, the meaning being skewed by the twisted sense of value I have on my life. But, hmm, I think that maybe I'll eventually get around to giving it a try.