The Elusive Eddie Arnold Soundtrack of Our Lives

There's Sunday Night Football, or Football Night in America, or whatever the Frank they call it these days, and I don't care. I really couldn't care any less, and you know what...I typically don't. I've changed a lot over the past six or seven years, and that might be perhaps one of the more noticeable changes. I don't need to know the score anymore, with a few exceptions. Instead, I read, I write, I let music shape my curiosities, and I daydream a lot. I've always daydreamed a lot. I have a dozen report cards jammed in a desk drawer somewhere that each have notes about my daydreaming. It's always been a bit of a problem, in the best possibly way, I'd suggest.

I haven't filled my head exclusively with sporting interests for what seems like years now. These days I barely make the Michigan - Notre Dame game because I'm talking script writing with a good friend, and I missed all ten of the Tiger games I bought tickets for this year because I was doing school work, or playing with my daughter. The truth is that I care less and less, with notable exceptions, and I feel healthier and healthier. It used to be entirely about experiences, and now it feels entirely about relationships.

It was only good sense that pulled me from the stellar pre-game conversation I was enjoying with my friend, Jason...had the wind blown from a different direction I might have very well stayed and talked into the darkness, missed kick off and the first half, and quite possibly only managed the last minute and twelve seconds...turns out that was the only part anyone really remembers anyway.

The truth is we change, all of us, and if you're not, then you're slowly decaying. For many of us the things we change aren't the things that we're most closely associated with, or that we seem to enjoy the most, but for me, and for Jason as well it seems, we're busy attacking everything that isn't what we want it to be, and everything that we never leaned into hard enough in our past. Call it a mid life crisis, call it whatever you like. I call it living. Root up some ideas, ridiculous as they might seem to others, and chase 'em down. No worries about catching them, it's the chase that we're after.

Over the course of thirty-nine years there have been a number of Brians, and you could probably hear a different story about a different guy from each and every decade. That's fine. Each version gets better as far as I'm concerned, and that's the whole point. I'm proud of my friend Jason for chasing down some daydreams and paying some attention to the nagging ideas that rattle around his head and heart. I'll skip a kick off, or Sunday Night Football, or any of that nonsense for whispy dream talk anyday.

Sunday night football...hmmf. I'm listening to a sweet, sweet voice, typing bold missives about ever boldening friends and ideas, and life is good. It doesn't feel old and familiar, or stagnant and uninspiring...it feels, I dunno...good.

Take us into the dark, quiet night Eddie.