Proud of Myself

My mother sent this to me this morning.  It is a copy of an email that I sent her 10 years ago!  It was my second year in college at Columbia College Chicago.  After my freshman year, I chose to stay in Chicago and not go back to Cincinnati for the summer.  My parents told me that if I was staying in Chicago, then I would need to support myself.  I was the only one of my friends that did not go home for the summer.  I moved out of the dorms, found a roommate wanted ad and moved in with 2 older guys in the city. 

I was working at House of Blues in the company store folding T-shirts and at Billboard magazine as an assistant.  I had just started to follow the production staff around as they set up for the concerts and I knew that this was what I wanted to do.  I wanted to be a live sound engineer.  So, I quit my Billboard job to give me more time to follow the production team around.   I wanted to be there from load-in to load-out, and not just arrive after I got out of Billboard at 5pm.  Arriving at 5pm I would get to see soundcheck, but none of how it was all set up.  

So, I chose to follow my heart to work for free and let go of my good-paying assistant job.  Never once have I doubted that decision.  Soon enough they started to pay me as a stagehand (since I was not going away), and then letting me do sound for the blues bands on the restaurant stage and so the story goes.....

Also thought of this :I saved it and always had it available in my 'whatever box'-for some reason I never filed it away. I guess I used it as a reminder that as much as I would worry about  you, you were happy and that 's what counted.
 Love you, Mom