What's Stopping Us?

Before we get started, I just want to say that I had a really good smoothie for lunch.  Banana peach.  I think what made it really good was that the peaches were frozen, so it was really smooth and chilled.  This is your sign to have a smoothie for lunch.

Anyway.

Late last night, for reasons I can't quite explain, I decided that I might as well win a Grammy.  How hard could it be? I wondered.  I can play three instruments pretty well, and I'm working on a fourth, and I can maybe sing a little.  I've been in ensembles as recently as this year, have studied music theory, and I just love music.  If Justin Bieber and Kanye can put out...whatever the hell their latest albums were and still get nominated for Album of the Year, then why not me?

I wouldn't go for album of the year.  I would go more for the Americana/Roots/Folk side of things, maybe arranging.  Or pull a surprise and go for spoken word poetry since that's something I do, too.  Let the Taylor Swifts and Olivia Rodrigos of the world be the pop stars; I just think it would be kind of fun to play my instruments, write some instrumentals, sing some long-forgotten and royalty-free American folk songs, just because I enjoy it.  And then I guess record and release them and try to win a Grammy, a win that would probably be an accident.

I'm being a dumbass about all of this, of course.  I know it's not that easy to record an album and win a Grammy; I'm just being an ass.  But last night, I was fully convinced I could do it, and I was talking to a friend about it today, and we were both saying the same thing: at some point...why not us?  What's stopping us from doing the things we want to do?  I joke that a Grammy is easy to win, but the fact of the matter is that I have been playing and studying music for over a decade, I'm out in the world now, and maybe it's not a stupid idea to want to record some music.  It's not.  And if I happen into some success with it...well, then why not?

This isn't to say it'll happen.  I don't want to get ahead of myself, to get a big head or fool myself into thinking something will happen when it really won't.  But it's fun to dream, and I think a why not me? attitude isn't a bad one to have.