I was reading The Soloist a bit earlier and started wondering how different things may be if I would've taken a different path after my sophomore year. I have distinct memories of being in fear that my high school was going to close and so I thought about potential career options and one of them at the time was in music since I excelled at it. I ended up getting an audition with the School of the Arts in Cleveland and went, talked with a teacher and played Harlem Nocturne on my alto sax. I would later find out that by some stroke of luck (I didn't take private lessons with the alto sax but rather played in band through middle school and a little bit in high school) was accepted. I ultimately decided to stick it out at Lutheran East since it seemed the school was stable enough that it would stay open at least until I graduated.

I have to admit that in addition to the soloist my speaking with a psychic that said I had a creative gift that wasn't properly nurtured got me to thinking as well. I enjoy playing piano for people (probably not the sax so much anymore as I'm sure those reeds are beyond useless now) and I do miss it from time to time. I wonder how much different my life would have been had I taken music more seriously. I started to become increasingly practical with my thoughts of a future and since the odds were against me in finding a decent paying job as a musician I decided I should leave music as a hobby and pursue a more "serious" career. I don't know if I should say that I regret my decision as I'm completely sold on being in psychology but I can only imagine how many friends I would've lost and gained. Assuming I still ended up at Miami, my friends likely would've been completely different as I would've wanted friends outside of my field. Knowing me I probably would've been unhappy getting lost in the sounds of an instrument over and over just to have someone tell me that this or that needed to be improved or played differently. I'll take pondering what kind of musician I could've been over potentially ending up wandering between Pershing Park and the tunnel at 2nd and Hill