There was a difference between having a life and living a life, and I really wanted to discover what that difference was. I had a life. Most would say it was a good life. But for me it seemed like all I was doing was chasing the second hand on a clock. I would move forward through the day, but at the close I had nothing to show for it other than the passage of time. At the ripe old age of twenty-six, I was tired beyond belief and walking through my days and nights like a zombie.

 

But the people who had been filling the stadium for the last hour and a half were not here to see the walking dead. They were doctors, lawyers, garbage men, seamstresses…. They came from small towns and cities, ghettos like those I grew up in, and plush estates like the ones I lived in now. I had come to know the people behind those gilded doors had their own kinds of problems. But all of these people occupying seats in the heart of this building or swaying drunkenly on the floor, they worked, sweated, and stressed to earn the money to buy the tickets to this concert and listen to my music. I wouldn’t let them down.

 

After all, I was one of them once. I even sold my ten-speed to purchase tickets to see my idol, Colton Remkus, who was one of our openers tonight. Because of that, I vowed to sing the hits I’d sung a biljallion times before like I recently released them and they were still fresh. As Colt did for me. Though I didn’t feel like I had the heart for it, I would bring the vitality of the damned Energizer Bunny if it killed me.