I’ve written stories about my friends that they might find offensive. I don’t blame them if they do. I often convey their personalities in an unflattering way. I don’t mean to purposely demean them, I just amplify my perception of a small part of them that adds character. And in an attempt to be fair, I’ll attempt to write about myself in a self deprecating way.

It was the year Twenty-Nineteen and I had decided I was going to become an entertainer. My landscaping job was not only shameful, embarrassing, dirty, and non-lucrative, it was also kicking my ass. I realized that I wasn’t physically going to be able to do the labor-intensive work much longer. I needed a new career plan that I could live with. The thought of working a seven to six job until I die of sadness, fluorescent lights, and monotony just made me want to die sooner.

But here I have this fountain of talent for writing songs and singing that has remained untapped for thirty years. It requires a lot less physical labor, and since my standard of income is so extremely low anyway, I should be able to continue barely supporting my family with minimal impact.

Somehow, I have worked hard for years to find the perfect income bracket that allows us to survive in poverty. Making just enough money to almost never owe taxes, qualify for affordable health insurance, and still have enough to enjoy pizza and movies on special occasions. It’s pretty good science until the President throws some random bullshit executive order into the theory.

If I was going to restart a music career, I needed to start honing my craft. So I asked my family to help make a video to submit to the Tiny Desk contest. They agreed to help, but as the days passed, my repeated requests seemed to always be ill timed. So I waited. And waited. Asked again and waited some more. Soon the deadline was upon me. I had one night left and everyone was still too busy to hold a camera to make a video, so I set up a tripod, drank a beer, hooked up a light, drank a beer, adjusted the light, drank a beer, adjusted the sound, and drank another beer. And then I put on a clean-ish shirt and a hat and recorded two amazing songs.

I opened up the first song presentation by explaining that I didn’t understand ‘charisma’. It was one of the required suggestions for submitting a video. I said, in an uncontrolled, high pitched, special needs sort of way,” I don’t even know what charisma is, I don’t think I have it, but here’s a song anyway!”. The second video was much less exciting, I may have said, ” This, I wrote, a long time ago….  here it is. By the way I’m not sitting at a desk. It’s a drafting table, but I guess that counts as a desk too, so…” I thought it was a good idea to show in each video, a half full, glass of beer with a lime in it, on ice, to show I was enjoying myself and I had some class.

I uploaded it to YouTube and enjoyed a few more beers, knowing I had just created some possible winning videos.

The next day, I came home fithy from work, had a few beers, with ice and lime, and decided to upload one more winning video. Mostly because of the rule of three’s, coinciding with the best chance at having good luck. I didn’t bother to shower or change clothes and wound up recording an extra song, completely negating the rule of three’s. I also chose to use distorted electric guitar to get all gritty and down and dirty. I wanted to present myself as a real person with a real job so they might decide I need to be rescued from my real life.

Oddly, some time passed and I didn’t receive my winning invitation to perform at the actual Tiny Desk on National Public Radio. I did receive a ‘thank you for your submission’ email, so that was almost like winning. 

Since then, I started recording an album while enjoying beer, then finished the album while enjoying no beer. Most of the ‘drinking’ tracks were deleted and re-recorded due to strange technical problems like inconsistent rhythm timing called latency, and slurred singing, called slurred singing. The computer probably just needed to be re-booted.

Sobriety hasn’t made my work shirts any cleaner but has reduced their appearance in videos by fifty percent. It also hasn’t motivated my family to help when they said they would, but it has lowered my bitterness and anger by a factor of three. It has increased my ability to perceive reality by approximately fifteen degrees but hasn’t deterred my retirement plan of pursuing a career in music in any way, so I’m not sure if sobriety even really actually works.

I’m considering selling black-market ‘clean urine’ to functioning drug addicts as an alternative or a side gig but still haven’t committed. I still need to do some legal research on liability and insurance fraud. I suppose I may have to choose between selling bootleg pee and playing a guitar, but it’s almost the same thing. It’s giving away a part of myself for money.

Someday, I hope to be so big that even really large desks appear to be tiny. I’m also okay with poverty. It really doesn’t matter as long as the family is good and everyone is healthy.

There’s also no shame in having a tiny desk. Especially if all the drawers work and you get your work done.

Just to be clear, my desk is a drafting table, so…