Crossroads...

I have spent a great deal of time and effort (and money) on getting back into the music scene after several years away from it. My friend and I spent over a year putting together a huge setlist of over 200 cover tunes plus at least a dozen originals so that we could let the audience choose the songs they wanted to hear. We practiced every week to keep on top of such a huge undertaking. I created a website, spent months trying to build a rapport with various other musicians and venue owners in order to get gigs. Sadly, my playing skills are not something worthy of the stage and no one wants to see a singer with just a tambourine or shaker... so I have always had to rely on my friend to play guitar. We made a great team. We could follow each other and knew each other's cues. I spent decades training him just the way I wanted a duo partner to be... A few days ago, he informed me that he needed to quit for financial reasons as he had to get a PT job to pay off some debt. I get that... I do... but now I need to make a decision that will change my life. It's time to call it quits forever... or find someone new to play with. But we've been together over 20 years! How do you just replace that??? So anyway, I'm stressing... and apparently, drowning my stress in ice cream and chocolate... yet somehow still managed to lose a few pounds. And I need to make a big decision. If I quit now, there's no going back. If I find someone else, I'm right back where I was... stuck depending on someone else that could - at any time and with no warning - leave me stuck all over again.

This is really just for me to sort my thoughts... but if you read this far, thank you. I've been away from here for a long time too. Had a lot to deal with... I'm trying to get back to me... to what I need. But it's like finding tiny peices of myself all over the place and needing to fit the puzzle together to see which pieces are still missing. Right now, I feel like a lot of the pieces are still out there... somewhere.