what’s a nice jewish girl like me doing with a bunch of rednecks? getting inspiration, that’s what.

i think i had a mid-life crisis when i was 28. (i know, i know. i had it a lot earlier than i was supposed to. i’m an overachiever.) all my life, i had worked toward a goal, a goal which turned out to be someone else’s goal for me. i’d become a lawyer, i’d go into politics, i’d help to save the world.

after a month in a law school where people stole the books you needed to do your work, i decided that law school was really not for me. i had argued endlessly with the torts professor; and while i’m sure he knew his stuff cold and i was misguided, in my little bear brain, i knew that if what he was saying was correct, i didn’t want to be a part of it. i quit (and it became perhaps the most expensive lesson of my life), worked awhile, and earned a fellowship to graduate school. i loved my graduate school experience, especially the fact that my school’s mission was to prepare us not for a life of contemplating our respective navels but rather to get tools to actually make change in the real world.

however, washington probably hardly qualifies as the real world.

after stints in government relations, which is the non profit way of saying lobbyist, i realized that i didn’t care for the people who did the work i was doing; further, i didn’t want to become one of them. (case in point: one asked me where i went to school. when i told her rutgers, she literally turned away from me as if  i had poisoned the air by my very being. sorry honey, i wanted to say to her back, but not all of us have a keen desire to carry student loans into the next millenium. especially since i was still carrying that one loan for my ill-fated law career.)

so i went into the world of government work.

i loved the people i met in government work. my original boss is still my mentor; he still considers me one of his daughters (along with the other two ladies with whom i started.) i would be honored to be a government employee again in my career. however, at 28, i realized that i was not even close to a life i had envisioned. (i was going to already be in congress by 28, doncha know.) i was not satisfied, and i didn’t even know what the hell i wanted.

You don’t need no gypsy to tell you why
You can’t let one precious day slip by
Look inside yourself
And if you don’t see what you want
Maybe sometimes then you don’t

this was around the time i started listening to the allman brothers album eat a peach. i was quite sure i would one day have a daughter i would name after the song melissa; and i listened incessantly to ain’t wasting time no more as if it were a call to action. sometimes, i would listen to it on my little walkman on my way to work and wonder what the hell the song was saying to me. was there a message in there somewhere? (duh.)

there was. and one day, i got off my ass and took action. i saw a career counselor who told me i was in the wrong line of work in terms of what i actually enjoy doing: you need to be doing more creative work.

and that’s just what i ended up doing.

We’ll raise our children
In the peaceful way we can
It’s up to you and me brother
To try and try again
Well, hear us now, we ain’t wastin’ time no more
‘Cause time goes by like hurricanes
Runnin’ after subway trains
Don’t forget the pouring rain