It’s Never Too Late to Be a Rockstar!
As a kid, it was important to my mother that I participate in choir
and take piano and flute lessons. I was not a fan of all
that as those obligations got in the way of coming home from
school, raiding the kitchen cupboards, and ruining my
appetite for dinner by chowing down on snacks while my
siblings and I watched television after school. 
My piano
playing was marginal at best. I lived in the shadow of two
cousins who were better than I was. One even went on to a
career as a professional pianist with the Milwaukee
symphony! At family gatherings when they showcased their
talents, I found ways to avoid it. My flute teacher had recitals
during the year that required me to play a solo in front of of an
audience. After each performance, I immediately started
getting stressed about about the next recital even though it was months away.
Guitar Lessons?
There was one musical endeavor I did inquire about—learning to play the guitar. One of my illustrious piano playing cousins got to take guitar lessons and it looked like fun! She played an acoustic guitar so it wasn’t as awesome as playing an electric guitar, but it was cool in a Don McClean’s “American Pie” kind of way. When I inquired about taking guitar lessons my mother said only people who can sing should play the guitar. Hmmmm, what was she implying? Since I didn’t like singing in front of people, I let it go. “No” was her answer. The next decades were filled with a career, marriage, and kids. Any singing I did was with kids to the Wiggles, Disney songs, or at Christmas.
Tommy didn’t take “No” for an Answer
You may be familiar with a person named Tommy Wiseau. He had aspirations to be an actor and moved to Los Angeles but no one would take him seriously or give him an acting job. Not to be deterred; Tommy wrote, acted in, produced, and promoted his own movie. He even paid for it to stay in a theater for two weeks so it could qualify for the Oscars! For a long time “The Room” was known as one of the worst movies ever made. Not many people knew who Tommy was until James Franco made a movie about the making of “The Room” and starred in it as Tommy. Franco’s movie, “The Disaster Artist” was my favorite movie of 2017 not only because I found it highly entertaining, but also inspiring. Tommy didn’t take “no” for an answer. Thanks to “The Disaster Artist” Wiseau’s movie has attained cult status and although people go to it for different reasons than he originally intended, he has gotten the notoriety he craved. In this fun clip of Tommy and James on the Jimmy Kimmel show, Tommy’s unique style and great sense-of-self shows through: https://www.youtube.com/watch? v=aT1gOazMMm8.
Pursuing My Dream
Four years ago a small group of musicians at Natural Sound Studio in St. Paul needed an occasional fill-in bass player for Sunday afternoon jam sessions. I asked my sweetheart, Steve, who owns the studio and played in the group if he could teach me how to
play the bass guitar. 
Thanks to his help and online tutorials I have put to rest the paradigm I lived with much of my life. Although thinking I couldn’t play the guitar didn’t haunt me every day of my life, overcoming a fear of performing in front of people was real. Now it has become a thing of the past. It was something I desired enough to overlook and overcome the genuine possibility that I wouldn’t be good at it. Now I’m the bass player in Randolph Star and I help write and arrange our original music. Those choir practices I hated so much help me harmonize and the flute recitals that paralyzed me with fear are a thing of the past as I enjoy bringing our band’s music to audiences.
Did anyone ever tell you that you couldn’t do something and you later proved them to be wrong? I’d love it if you shared your inspiring story in the comments below!
Lang Creative Collective 