Jason Lindsay

So… I had this gear in my garage.

From my old metal band days, I had a bass practice amp, a bass guitar, and an old Sunn amplifier; stuff I had been carting around for several years (since the late 90’s).  I always told myself that I would use those things again, although everything else told me that I wouldn’t be using it.

A couple of years ago my brother gave me an acoustic-electric guitar, and I started learning how to play it.  My music roots came straight from the garage, and I had never really tried to learn how to play much of anything beyond power chords.  My opinion was, if it didn’t have a mountain of distortion on it, I didn’t want to play it.

But then I got older, and realized that I might actually want to learn how to play an instrument, and play it in such a way that more people would want to hear than would want to turn it off.  Last Father’s Day, my wonderful wife got me guitar lessons once a week, and it really got me going.

I started out with the acoustic, because it was what I had, but I always wanted to get myself an honest-to-goodness guitar amp and actually learn how to play it.  I was getting pretty good at the acoustic, but still wanted to be able to rock out.

It was only a couple of weeks ago when a co-worker of mine approached me with an offer to buy an amp.  It was the exact kind I was looking for, and it was at a really good price, so I just jumped and said I would buy it.  This got me motivated to take another look at all that old gear I had in the garage, because if I was going to pull off buying this amp, I had to do it in a way that wouldn’t impact the family budget.

I put the old gear up on a local free auction site, and within a week, I had successfully sold all the gear at a pretty good price, and had money to spare.  I had actually come out ahead!  It was a little sad to let go of the equipment I had been holding onto for so long, but given the trade-off of what I had gained, I was more than happy to part with it.

This past weekend, my nephew approached me at my great-niece’s birthday party and asked if I still wanted to buy his drumset.  It was a kit he got for Christmas last year, and I gave him an open invitation to buy it if he ever got sick of it.  I still had some cash left over from the great gear sell-off, and so I jumped again and said I would buy it.

Last night, he and my sister brought over the drums and we set them up in the TV room downstairs.  Some of the screws are missing, and the heads are shot (my nephew’s 17-years-old and likes pretty heavy rock; bless his soul), but the shells and hardware are still in great shape.  And, he gave it to me for a great price.

I’m not planning on fitting out the drum kit like it should be for awhile, especially purchasing the two crash cymbals that are conspicuously absent, but I know if I hadn’t jumped on the chance then, it would probably be quite some time before I could get my hands on anything like it at all.

My two-year-old loves the drums, and he was so excited when he woke up from his nap to hear his little brother playing them downstairs when he awoke.  We spent twenty minutes watching him go from drum to drum and cymbal to cymbal playing them all, and throwing his sticks up in the air when he was done (signaling applause, of course).  He cried hard when we finally put them away, but I think he’s old enough to understand that they are still there, and that he will get to play them again, sometime.

Someday those drums will probably become his full time.  But for now, we will enjoy what quiet time we can get.

My wife always say things happen for a reason, and I’m starting to believe her.  Within ten days, I had gone from having a bunch of gear that I’d had for a long time and wasn’t using, to having some gear I could actually use.  This encourages me to play more often, and to work harder to get better.  Who knows, maybe someday I’ll actually be able to write some music people will actually want to hear.

In the meantime, though, I’ve got plenty of toys to experiment with.

About one week ago, my brother-in-law Mark and I entered into a bet:  he would quit Diet Coke (and other soda containing caffeine) and I would quit drinking coffee.  Let’s back up a bit…

I have been a self-avowed coffee lover for many, many, years… going all the way back to when I started in the IT industry (circa 1994).  It’s not just something I drank – it was something I savored and immensely enjoyed.  So just saying “I quit coffee” wasn’t something to be taken lightly.

But I decided to do it.  We packed up my coffee makers (2 drip Mr. Coffee’s and a cappucinno maker), my carafe and dumped what Folgers I had left into the trash can.  With all my paraphenalia splayed out on the counter there, I started to feel like a junkie after an intervention.  What was I doing?

My new friends became Advil, water, and Mark’s old buddy Diet Coke.  I had headaches for the first three days, my appetite increased remarkably (the first two days I devoured my lunch before 11 a.m.), and I found myself driving from work down to the local gas station for a 44 oz. infusion of carbonated sugar-free cold caffeine.

Mark, on the other hand, was lowered to the much-maligned caffeine-free Diet Coke, and the occasional Fresca.  While I was still allowed to sip on the “cold” stuff, poor Mark had to go cold turkey.

But a week later, and I’m happy to say that I, while not being completely free of caffeine, have not had a single sip of coffee or tea, and I’m weaning myself off the Diet Coke (slowly).  Mark is now my new hero, and I’m hoping within a couple of weeks to be completely free of the stuff.

People at work have noticed, and have commented that I look “healthier”.  Instead of the Starbuck’s mug, the first thing I reach for every morning is a big glass of water.  And that jolt of energy my body has been looking for during the past week has been replaced with a natural surge.  And I find myself more calm and easy-going in the afternoon and evenings.

In the last few years, I have given up a lot of things, and removed many sources of addiction out of my life.  Coffee was the last thing I had, and I held onto it with all my strength.  But, now that it’s not around anymore, I find that I don’t miss it that much.

It has been replaced with something much more fulfilling.