Moving the Future to Now
by Greg Powers
In September 2023, when I turned 60, I undertook an exercise to figure out how, exactly, I would spend my time if I never had to work another day in my life. I’ve speculated about that many times, as I’m sure we all have, but mostly in a fantastical vein. I might have imagined buying a castle in Liechtenstein, or ballooning over the Himalayas, or being the high bidder at an auction of Andy Warhol paintings—big, silly ideas, none of which I would actually do. Castles are hard to insulate, I’m afraid of heights, and I’d probably spill cherry Kool-Aid all over my new $243 million painting. So, really, no thanks. This was a more earnest attempt to answer some interrelated questions that many people have difficulty answering, like “What am I working for?” and “How, exactly, does one become happy?”
Let me stop right here and just say that I really enjoy my work, and on the happiness scale I’m probably far above average, so those questions were not complaints, just a simple query about what, realistically, I would do if I could do anything.
So I jotted down a handful of activities I’ve really enjoyed over the course of my life, and noted aspects of the many and various jobs I’ve held that really engaged me, and I found three common themes, one of which was Creativity. When presented with that hard evidence of what made me happy, I immediately thought about music and songwriting.
I’ve written poetry since I was a kid. I remember penning an epic in rhyming couplets about the Houston Oilers football team and their coach, Bum Phillips, when I was probably 12 years old; I wrote angst-ridden blank verse in college; and when courting my now-wife of 32 years I hand-crafted little books of poems for her. Then about two decades ago I thought it would be fun to write songs, so I started channeling my poems into structured lyrics. I amassed a pretty crowded stable of lyrics, but despite having the words, I could never create the music to go with them. So I decided that when I had that free time I was going to learn to play guitar and compose music.
But there’s something about growing old that makes you realize that no time is free. It’s the strangest of currencies—you must spend it whether you have it or not; and at the same time, if you don’t have it, you can make it.
So instead of waiting for that distant future full of supposedly-free time, I decided to steal some time each day from my busy schedule, and that very day in 2023 I diligently started practicing on my old Yamaha acoustic guitar. Since then I’ve only missed a few days of practice. Maybe I only have 15 minutes to noodle a few scales, sometimes I carve out a couple of hours to really focus…but I’ve stuck to it. I also dove into music theory, and I signed up for voice lessons at the Music School.
My progress has been slow, but I have relished it like nothing else in life, and now I have a handful of completed and recorded songs, with another half-dozen in various stages of completion. Do I regret waiting 60 years before pursuing that passion? Absolutely. But that regret actually amplifies the joy I feel now whenever I pick up my guitar, or find the perfect word to fit a melody. And really, “now” is the only time any of us truly have.
I don’t know if I will ever hit that magical goal of financial independence that I was dreaming about, but it almost doesn’t matter anymore, because that future that I was hoping for, I simply made part of my present.
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