It’s crazy. I was never really super close to my grandparents. They did take care of me when I was little here and there, but mostly I was with my mom and dad so I didn’t really spend a lot of time alone with them. They did take me to a few baseball games I played in when I was 10 or 11 and they always took me to Burger King to eat after. I also remember my grandpa taking me on a walk when we were at a parade because I really hated loud noises. That was really cool, I liked that time with him.
This past weekend my grandmother passed away and a few years before that my grandfather did as well. I went into it thinking I wouldn’t really have a hard time, but it got progressively harder and after grandma left I really had a hard time processing it.
I think it really brings into focus your own mortality. The things that you still didn’t get to do even though you are already 40 years old. The thought of you or your parents passing is a horrible feeling. The feeling of bringing life into this world at a time when it is so so messed up and horrible. People have lost their way, the whole world has really lost their way and every morning we look for a way to find where we can go.
This whole situation and dealing with death, put a huge drain o my mental state and the state of the record label. I am very far behind on a lot of things and it’s totally hot because I am lazy (I don’t think so anyhow), but I just can’t sit there and work. My brain won’t quiet down enough for me to catch up.
The record label is a business and the income it brings in goes, of course, to putting out more records and helping out with bills. Everything in the record industry has changed so so much, everything is way more expensive and the return on everything isn’t half of what is used up be.
I am not an authority on this, but it had changed so much in 20 years.
I have had some time to decompress and really think about my life and what is going on. I let done bands down, missed deadlines, left people hanging, owed people money and kind of drowned this past year, and the death thoughts just add to the aggravation.
I’m finally making a good swing back, and finally getting my head above the ground a little bit.
Give Praise will continue well into the upcoming 2025 and way beyond, but every once in a while, I will need to step back and collect my thoughts. I’m really going to try and keep track of everything, but I am not perfect and, as of right now, the only employee at Give Praise, although I do have a radical group of people who freelance and help out a lot.
Like I said, Give Praise is a business and we had a bit of a set back, being a dad being one of the setbacks. Being a dad and husband are so important to me and in the first few years of being a dad, all I wanted to do was hang out with my little bud.
The upcoming 2025 will be stacked with cool stuff around here. Thank you for hanging in there and letting me push through and continue to bring the radical news of Give Praise.