End Game
As third acts go, I’m having fun, particularly on the music front. I played an open mic again last night, and it went reasonably well. I held my own. I was ignored by some, complimented by others, and actually had someone dancing. That’s always nice. Plus, some friends came along, and one of them played, too, and that made the evening even better, because I like my musical friends, comrades in arms.
As for what I mean by a third act, this is the time of my life that came after marriage and children, which came after my childhood and flying solo. As I’ve said before, this is also my Guadalupian period that came to me physically two years ago after I came down from summiting Guadalupe Peak, the highest point in Texas. It felt a life changing experience for an old man, and a good thing to embrace.
Now, mortality is a subject mostly avoided, but I find it hard to avoid, partly because I watched my wife leave this world recently, and now I’m at the age where my time is coming, too. Not soon, I hope, but it's an inevitable part of the human condition and I might as well embrace it. Which is what I’m doing, as I sing and write. And I intend to keep doing it, right up until that final moment when my little collection of atoms loses its cohesion and breaks apart to become stardust once again.