A great song can easily be judged by how influential it is when you connect with it the first time your hear it and how it never grows old no matter how many million times you listen to it. It’s always relevant to you.

Last Tuesday was a big day musically for me as three of my favorite artists released records. And while this isn’t ‘New Music Monday,’ I can’t help but talk a little bit about a song on one of the albums that made me breakdown a little and think about where I’m at in my life. In a gross understatement that only my wife will get, this has been a ‘busy’ month.

So this is about a song. Listening to it has restored the value and energy I have in my faith and my perseverance as a person. Everything I do has purpose and my effort and belief will be reward despite the disruptions along the way. You see, new employment opportunities, selling the house that both of my children have always known as home, not having a new residence for a destination, and just growing up and trying to be more responsible has really wore me down lately.

Before I go any further, those of you readers who receive email updates, I strongly recommend going to the actual ourowncountry.blogspot.com to get the audible aid in the form of music. And if I can off one more piece of advice…..turn it up LOUD.

I’ve literally listened to this song a hundred times. Each time the result is tears of joy. This is what I’d define as the reason for music. That is; music is what emotions sounds like. If you’ve been following the chronicles of my family and our never-ending life-changing decisions, you know that we once again at a crossroads. And while I have support in every corner of my life, I find that at the end of the day, the accountability for success falls squarely on my shoulders. Lately, I’ve worried greatly about letting everyone down in my house. I look at Son #1 and wonder how can mix his life up like this.


While occasionally you get to make decisions where there are clear successes and failures, typically, our life-changing decision don’t carry the simplicity of these results. They take years to truly evaluate their ramifications. But despite all of the ambiguity in these decisions, I’ve always tried to do my best to evaluate the best answers to our complex problems. And for the first time in my life, I am scared that I risked too much.

Enter Authority Zero and “Get it Right.” Succinctly, it captures what I’m feeling in sound. Twisted thoughts, contrived truths, and misled observations. Here I sit; trying to make the best decisions I can and worry about getting it right. I keep poking my head into harm’s way. I’m scared as hell that I’m going to screw this up and my family will resent the torture I’ll be putting them through. Just the other night after work, I sat with Son #1 on my lap and asked him if he trusted that I would do what is best for him and his brother. I started to break down as I muttered out the question. I couldn’t breathe and I could feel my anxiety begin to creep in to my consciousness. As I sputtered out the words in between tears, Son #1 leaned in closer to me, smiled that big cheesy smile, and said yes, he trusts me.

To cap off the emotion which is gushing like a BP oil spill in the Gulf, this song is like and old friend who knows just what to say, sometimes what not to say, and when and where to say or not to say it. “Get it Right” put a definition on how I’m feeling and how I carry along. Of course my description of the song and my emotions are somewhat irrelevant tot the reader. As with emotion, music is also extremely personal and wildly introspective. But how great is it to have something so esoteric, yet so poignant that connects with you and makes you feel a little more comfortable with the discomfort of life?


Right now, I’m just hoping someday I’ll get it right.

Over the course of the last few weeks, I feel like I've had very little time to decompress. And for the most part that is true. The rain has kept me from riding, work and transitioning to a new position has filled the tank to a maximum level of stress, and the future state of my family’s residence have kept me in a sullen state of confusion and left me with no time to formulate any synthesized thought about the aforementioned topics.

So I’ve been hoping at least one thing would settle in my reality so that a slight bit of normalcy, or whatever my altered state of reality defines as normalcy, would return and I can substantiate something of some interest to scribble in the electronic byte-like walls of this blog.

You ask and you shall receive. Well, maybe it’s not so cut and dry. But what I’ve found over the most formative years of my life is that I don’t like making single life making decisions. They seem meaningless and trivial. I like having everything completely in disarray and fucked up so that I can ultimately stress out about the manic convergence of life changing decisions on top of me at that moment. I perform best when everything is on the line. Never have I been risk averse.

So now my family joins me on the quest to discover where my professional career will take me. Philosophical questions like “What do I want to be when I grow up?” they are now entertaining. At work I have come to the realization that I am no longer challenged intellectually so I am shaking every tree to see what fruit of opportunity drop. But we don’t stop there. Son #1 is rapidly growing up and just graduated pre-school. Now this isn’t a miracle so to speak. But given the fact that his father was kicked out of his pre-school graduation, it concerns that father that no good can come of this. Needless to say, he graduated but not without drama. That is an entry in and of itself.

With his graduation, we launch in to the next educational phase of his existence. The public school system. We are in the precarious position of deciding where we want him to go to school. The neighborhood we live in sucks balls. So we decided a few months ago that we would sell this house and move into a better school district where we felt that Son #1 had a chance to be taught by real teachers who give a shit. We decided to sell our current home out right and risk living out of a box until we found our next residence. That would give me the greatest financial leverage to negotiate rather than navigate the murky uncharted waters of contingencies.

Those are the two marquee situations that we are currently evaluating. But as I said, I have a penchant for making all of my life changing decision all at the same time.


In my current professional role, my technical aptitude has been buried and I was continually being passed over for new opportunities. In the recent past, there has been the old cliché of when it rains it pours. I am in the fortunately unfortunate position of having multiple interviews for new intellectually challenging positions and will be able to choose my course. In the next week, I will begin my new challenge as a product manager for the work horse and best seller of our product offerings. It has the most threats in the market and is the most dynamic in the form of innovation. A great challenge.


As my wife once told me, the house situation and the work situation were interdependent and when one settled the other was soon to follow. Needless to say, one week after I committed to my new position, we had a second showing of our house to a couple that made as a competitive offer that was within our range of acceptability in a degraded market. To formally enter a contract to sell your home, you need a successful inspection. We were very fortunate to find only two minor things needing to be addressed. With completion of those, the rest is up to the buyers to get there financing in order with a visit from the appraiser. This still can provide a hitch in the process but we are hoping for the best.

Now we are on the clock to find a new home in the area of our choice, with the configuration we desire, and the future of memories we're going to create. We've been out three times now to look and are pretty excited to get the process going. This will be the third house we have bought in the last seven years. With any luck, we can stay in it for awhile. This decision is based on the greater good of the family and our future so I’m sure it will be perfect.




While it is stressful to do everything at once, sell a house, buy a house, change jobs, and protect your family from adversity, I welcome the adverse challenge. My life has always been like a snow globe. When the snow settles, I shake the shit out of it again.