Latest / Wanzology / Plateau Or Peakin'?
Transcript
- Plateaued Or Peakin’ Ooh, na-na, na-na. Na-na, na-na. “Anal-nathract oos-bat vitad... “, whatever that chant is. Hey, what's going on? How you doing? Welcome to another episode of WANZOLOGY!! I am your host, The Wanz, and I had a very, very interesting 250th celebration of America's independence. Actually, it wasn't that interesting. It was quite tame but fulfilling. I spent the day with my youngest son and his son and wife and met a lot of their friends and hung out, and it was awesome. Skipped the fireworks and went to see some friends of mine do a P-Funk tribute. Danced myself into, yes, pain. Yeah, waking up the next day was kinda painful 'cause I moved a lot, and once you get a little older, yeah, you can't do the things that you used to do. You live through things, and, uh, this day, whichever day you are celebrating, is no different. Today, I wanted to talk about plateaus. I came to this idea not easily, not very easily at all. I started thinking about where I'm at now, the birthday of this nation, and how I fit into the scheme of history, and all these really, really complicated thoughts. And then I stepped away from all those complicated thoughts and started thinking about, "Well, wait. Nothing's happening right now. What does that mean? What does that mean for someone else? What could it mean for someone else?" That got me thinking of a song that I wrote called You Gotta. The chorus goes, "You gotta choose what you gonna do. You gotta trust you'll make it through. You gotta feel like you're in the mix. Take a deep breath, you got this! You gotta see what comes next. You gotta give all your best. You gotta leave all the rest. You gotta, you gotta.", and the first verse is, "So what you think? You gonna make it? Are you plateaued or are you peaking? Better mind your situation. Don't get caught unaware and out of season. Bet you never thought about the difficulties And how the simple things just slip through your grasp. Well, it's getting hot, more casualties, And the next move just might be your last." How true is that? That whole ‘are you plateaued or are you peaking’? What does that mean? Are you at a place in your life where so many things are happening you can't really hang on, or things are about to spin off the axis or whatever? Or are you almost to one of your goals and you're peaking and you think that that's it? Okay, I can't go any farther Well, what if you could? What would you do? Would you push the envelope, so to speak? Or would you just kinda lay off the gas and coast? Everybody's different, and there is no right answer to those questions. My dad used to say, "Make sure you know the difference between wasting time and treading water." And I've talked about this before. Wasting time is just hanging out, not really having any direction, not having any purpose, not really having any cares, just kinda being there, whatever. Whereas when you're treading water, you're looking around to see where you came from, you're looking to see where you're going, and you're trying to conserve a little bit of energy before you push on. So is plateauing bad? I don't think so. I think a plateau is necessary in order for us humans to remember what the heck we're doing, why we're doing it, and how we're gonna get to where we want to be. Case in point, when I got out of college, I moved to Seattle and got a job conveniently working at a record store, started hanging out with a lot of other musicians and just kind of feeling out the turf, getting to know people and whatnot. Why? Because I was out of the small pond of Ellensburg, and now I was in the big pond of Seattle, where there were a lot more of me, meaning a lot more talented musicians who were writing songs, performing, yeah, I was in a bigger pond. That also meant I was in with bigger fish There were many times that I would have to, like, stop, take a breather, and where the hell am I going? 'Cause it felt like I was wandering in the wasteland. Bands don't work out all the time. Personalities grate against each other, people just generally get sick and tired of each other, and next thing you know, you're starting over again. A lot of people that I know are really, really good at that. I'm not. I'm not that great at picking up the pieces and starting over again when it comes to being an entertainer. What I am very good at is self-evaluation. That's not a good thing. Self-evaluation tends to be skewed. Self-evaluation tends to be prejudice. Self-evaluation can be dangerous. Well, let's put it this way. There's a reason doctors don't operate on themselves. You ever think about that? Dentists don't do their own drilling. Surgeons never take out their own pancreas. In legal terms, the person who defends themselves has a fool for a client. How are you at your self-evaluative techniques? Are you constructive, destructive, ambivalent, all of those things? For me, plateaus have always been that reflective time when I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do. I say it like that because I've always felt that there are things that I'm ‘supposed to do’ versus the things that I ‘can do’, and I don't always get it right. In fact, my average is way below two hundred, in my opinion. But then that would be the self-evaluation part that I'm talking about. Guilty as charged! Plateaus for me have always been that way station, like rest stops on a long, long highway trip. I gather energy and figure out, what the heck am I doing? Where the hell am I going? How long till I get there? Am I going the right direction? Am I doing the right thing? Am I doing the right thing for the right reasons? These are all things that I can do when I'm waiting at a plateau, 'cause Lord knows if I'm out there grinding, I really don't have time to do all, any of that stuff, 'cause I'm grinding. Last night I went to a jam session for a friend of mine. I was very, very surprised how many people didn't show up for this person. But that didn't mean that I couldn't be me, 'cause I like being me. And at this jam session, I got to play drums for a little while, I got to play bass for a little while, I got to sing for a little while, and I finished the night off singing "Lean On Me" for our mutual friend. She and I had a conversation earlier that evening, and she didn't realize that she was part of such a supportive community. She's had an accident, medical bills and all this other stuff, and all of a sudden these people are coming out of the woodwork, donating more money than they needed to, helping her out with groceries and meals and rides. I mean, last night was her first night out. She was completely surprised, completely stunned that people would think that much of her, totally forgetting how much she thinks of them. That's what I was trying to tell her. The coolest thing about being ‘part of’ something is that you are a part of something Have you plateaued or are you peaking? Are you done with your life or are you peaking? Do you have more things to contribute to someone else's life, not necessarily just your own? I find that as I get older, people in their late fifties and sixties start volunteering a lot more, whether it be at church or whatever. And now that I sit here thinking about it, the good reason is because they have the one thing that people behind them don't have, experience. You can't teach experience. I used to tell my sons, "You know, you're gonna have to go through some stuff to say you've actually been through some stuff." And their lives have bared that out. They don't look at me like I'm crazy anymore. But where are you at? Like the song I was talking about earlier says: “Where you at? What you thinking? Have you plateaued or are you peaking? Better mind your situation. Don't get caught unaware and out of season.”, which is a hunting reference, don't get caught unaware of where you're at and out of season, meaning you are the target of somebody else. We underestimate ourselves all the time. And I'm here to tell you that particular trait sneaks up on us all the time in the goofiest of places. When you're riding in public transit and you look at your shoes and you look at somebody else's shoes and it's like, "Damn, those are cool looking shoes." That doesn't mean that yours aren't. Or, "Wow, I wonder where they got that jacket.", well, you haven't got that jacket. Do you wanna get that jacket? And if so, is it simply because somebody else has it, or do you think it would look good on you? Would it enhance your appearance? Plateaus are good for taking a breather, taking a rest, taking inventory, which is really big when you're in recovery. Taking inventory at, at the end of every day is encouraged so that you can look back on your day and find everything, the good, the bad, the ugly, bBut most importantly of all, to evaluate those and determine what to do next We are all guilty of trying to gather as much information as possible to inform our next decision. We hope that we make a good decision. We don't wanna make a bad decision. I suggest not getting caught up in the result. We never know whether a choice is good or bad until after we've made the choice. Can't see around corners and nobody is a mind reader. So if you are plateaued, don't think of it as a bad thing. It's temporary, like everything else. I'm sure you can recall another point in your life that you were feeling the same sort of way for the same sort of reasons, confused, burnout, whatever. You've been here before, and that's the coolest thing about life that we tend to forget. The things that we feel today, we've felt before. Sometimes we can even recall the first time that we've felt them. But the hard thing is remembering what we learned from those feelings. What we learn, we need to keep reminding ourselves. We need to reinforce the positive and the negative so that we can stay in the middle of the road, 'cause nobody wants to get too far forward or too far back. Decisions just aren't as, uh, how you say, ‘clear’ when you're living too far in the future or lingering too long in the past. Life is made up of time, and time always moves forward. So don't just sit there. Get up off your butt and move. Get up off your butt and at least try to figure out where to move and when, who with, for how long, and why. Because the choice is coming, and you really do not have any say in when and how it appears. You feel me? I hope you do!! I hope that you have the wisdom to tell the difference between plateauing and peaking and everywhere in between. But I'll tell you this, the journey continues as long as you're breathing, so keep breathing, or else you're gonna have more difficult problems. That's what I got this week. Thanks for coming. Thanks for staying, and I hope to hear from you again. I am outta here!!