I am older now.

And with these advanced years comes more than just improper grammar and paragraph structure. I sometimes start a sentence with “and”. I don’t always define the subject of my blog in that first paragraph. Right now, you are looking at an expansion of thoughts on my increasing age but a curve ball is coming.

I just wanted to point out that I am older now and I find that everything is different.

For example… I used to be a musician. Well, let’s actually focus that a little bit better. I was always fascinated by music. I wanted to be a rock star like every other kid. My neighbor, Dale, was a fabulous guitar player who could seemingly play every Eddie Van Halen riff ever written. I admired Dale like no other (and still do). So I bought a guitar. I bought this terrible Gibson Explorer rip off made by Washburn against all advice. I couldn’t wait to show Dale. He played it and I had to admit in my very soul that it sounded a bit like ass.

Nonetheless, I carried on. I saved up and bought an Ibanez guitar similar to his. But I could never even approach his ability. One of the most glaring things for me was that I simply did not enjoy learning to play other people’s songs. So guitar teachers would say, let’s learn this Iron Maiden song… And I HATED learning it.

Eventually, I gave up and just decided to make up my own songs. Then no one could tell me if they were right or wrong. And, I could have 3,987 takes to get them right if needed.

So I wrote songs. But in my heart of hearts, I hated performing and playing live. I didn’t know this at the time. I know it now.

If I am honest with myself, music frustrates me and stresses me out. I mostly want to avoid it. I’d rather listen to audio books.

But that’s not what this blog was intended to be about. So maybe this is the theme sentence that the rest of the blog is based on. Probably not.

There are so many things throughout my life that I thought I knew, but now I know differently. There are things that I was sure were my purpose and things that never even dinged the radar.

I have a degree in English. But I have worked in Information Technology for 23 years. What did I think I would do with that degree besides pay Sallie Mae? Well… now I find myself ghost writing (and I really like it).

I am overweight and ugly. So I decided to start hiking to lose weight (can’t fix the ugly part). During this time, I was completely blocked from a music writing aspect. But I grabbed a camera and some supportive shoes and hit the trails. Turns out, I love taking pictures. And maybe, I have a decent eye for scenes.

I have been taking pictures and posting them on my Flickr Pro site for a while now. I’ve been published in magazines, newspapers and various websites for random photos I took. If I am honest with myself, I am more proud of those pictures than I am of my recording catalog.

If you have read my blog, you will see that I tend to write about Faith. That has not changed. Well, it does change daily as I struggle with being a human who is utterly unworthy of the notice of God. But I also try very hard to remind myself of His grace and sacrifice to redeem me to Himself.

So far I’ve spewed a bunch of thoughts on this post. If you are still reading this, you are to be rewarded. I’d give you a coupon for 100% off rickmester.com merchandise, but it doesn’t exist for a reason!

Let me make a feeble attempt at summarizing my thoughts… Incidentally, my scattered thoughts have nothing to do with my kind landlord dropping off a rare 6 pack of Bell’s Hop Slam IPA. I promise that they are all chilling, unopened in the fridge. My thoughts are simply that age brings about changes in our lives.

I used to be… I used to do… I used to… Those thoughts were for my youth. Maybe they were ill informed and immature? I don’t know.

But things are different now as a gray bearded person. I want some land in the country away from the population. I like to take photographs of nature wherever I find myself. I like writing out my thoughts or creating a fictional, yet impactful story. Music stresses me out and I just don’t enjoy it at all nowadays. Like Fox Mulder, I want to trust almost no one. I like my truck. I like craft beer. And I’ve come to realize that all is grace. And… I mostly wish I were somewhere else…

Be who you are. Be in His grace, but be in your now. The past is the past and we cannot imprint it on our future with certainty. Growth is not puking up who you used to be. It’s discovering who you have grown to be.

Good night friends
rick