Well, I finally got around to making myself a Virb account. I think it's a good idea, given the recent launch of the Very Us Artists with my friend and co-conspirator John LaSala and the hopefully wider exposure my music could get from it.

For those of you who don't know me but may have somehow stumbled upon my music, I've been writing songs for about 17 years now, since around the middle of high school, and while I'd always intended on making a career of it, but somehow I got sidetracked. Well, not somehow. I know how. Part of it was anxiety. I have huge anxiety problems that have twice in my life driven me to the point where I didn't know how I would ever be able to do anything, let along try to make a career out of music. Both times, my anxiety problems peaked just as I was getting ready to break out and make a real go of a music career. I was afraid of dying, convinced I had an array of esoteric diseases that would either gradually weather me into oblivion or make my heart blow up in my chest. I became so preoccupied with this that I was doing crazy things like asking my friend to watch me while I slept so he could wake me up if I stopped breathing.

I don't know exactly what triggered these anxiety bouts, but they effectively stopped me from having success with a music career. The second one left me unable to write music for about five years. I just couldn't do it anymore. I made my last recordings in June of 2000, had my little breakdown soon after, just as I was gearing up for a big music project, and didn't record another thing until 2005, other than little scrap ideas that I always thought of as being for future use when I finally got back on track.

Another big factor in this was September 11, 2001. On that day, I was at my desk in the back room of Borders in the World Trade Center's basement, when a sudden boom from above changed everything. My job was gone and my whole concept of what was happening in my life was torn apart. I entered survival mode. My girlfriend at the time, who also worked there and also lost her job, needed to get out of New York, so we moved up to Rhode Island, where we got married and had two kids while I pursued a more responsible line of work as a data manager for a research unit in a hospital. I also got an MBA. I tried to be normal. It didn't work well. That just isn't me. I'm not normal, and attempts to be normal just make me see how not normal I am. Of course, everyone thinks they're not normal, and certainly there are many people who are a lot less normal than me. But by normal, I mean something along the lines of "swallow your dreams, get a 9 to 5 job, and go about devoting your life to your kids and wife, letting off steam by going out drinking with buddies on the weekend." That whole thing just doesn't work for me, and unfortunately it's what passes for normal in our society. I mean, I love my kids and if I really needed to give things up for them, I would. But I don't, despite what others may tell me.

So, anyway, to make a long story short (lovely cliche, but it works), I started writing music at a snails pace again in summer of 2005, after a marital existential crisis of sorts that also revealed to me that I needed to get back to New York because Rhode Island was sucking my life away. In 2006, I moved back, and my music writing has returned now as John and I have set about trying to do this VUA project. It has worked out decently so far, though we need to figure out how to market this stuff better than we're doing. Despite my MBA credentials, I'm not that into the business side of music. To me they are creatures best kept separate. Once one begins to create music from a business standpoint, one usually creates some pretty lousy music. And if one gets too flaky on the business end (whereas flaky is usually good for music), it usually spells doom. But anyway, I'm doing my best to try to apply whatever business sense I have to the music project.

In the meantime, I have a full-time job, and possibly another part-time one if it pans out, and my wife works, too, so I'm very often watching the kids (two boys, ages four and one), so I have to do what I can to make time for writing music. But it has been working okay so far. Thankfully, John is quite good and dedicated when it comes to the detail work. He is a superb producer, even if he gets finds audio engineering to be little more than a tedious necessity. I doubt he realizes his talent. I'm also working with him on our own project, The Synthasium, which is tied in with VUA as well. Geez, I didn't realize how much I'm doing until I just wrote it out.

Anyhow, that's basically who I am and where I'm at in life. I'm 33 and going a little gray at the temples, but musically I still feel young and vital and I'm looking to have a good time with it and maybe, just maybe, figure out some way to make it more than a hobby.