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Note from Trish: It’s Never Too Late

Writer's picture: Trish BentleyTrish Bentley

When Ann sent me her draft for the piece It Ain’t Over ‘Till You’re Dead I got that wonderful feeling of knowing that I’m not alone. It’s like being at a party filled with happy, hot people and you’re standing there feeling irrelevant and out of place. Then, someone walks up to you and says, “I feel so irrelevant and out of place. You?” Ha. Suddenly a weight is lifted and somehow feeling irrelevant becomes a source of commonality between you and another human being. It’s probably one of the most important ways we can connect to one another.

When I was nineteen years old I was asked to play a song at a party in NYC. I was there with my sister and her friends and I was on my way to Ireland in a few days so of course I had my guitar with me. Back then I always had my guitar with me. I played the drums, guitar and sang my way through the teenage years; it was my sanity. That night, after I finished singing a song I had written, I looked up and there was my sister crying, her friends clapping and other people were approaching me with business cards. Don’t get the wrong impression, I wasn’t that good, I just think my sister was a little shocked and it was probably the normal routine for a party of hip Manhattanites to see a young girl belting out a tune, so they were just doing the standard, ‘Call me, I know people’ thing.

Well whatever it was, something changed in me and from that moment on I wanted to be a musician. Leading up to that time, I had always wanted to be a writer. I wanted to write fiction, interview people and basically just write about life. But after that party, I had one focus and that was to be my focus for years.

Eventually I found myself in a meeting with the man who wanted to manage me (DMX’s manager, lol) and after I walked out of his office in Times Square, I thought, this is it. It’s really starting. Well, it did start and then stop and then start and stop a few more times, but I got tired of the push and pull and eventually I fell out of love with the whole goal. I never stopped loving writing music or even performing it for that matter, I just didn’t want to die trying. And at the ripe ‘ol age of 27 I entered University for the first time with the goal of completing my BA. Ahhh humility is a beautiful thing.

Saying something like, I’m not where I thought I’d be at such and such an age is just plain limiting. It’s boring and it’s lame. It doesn’t actually accomplish anything but make yourself feel bad about where you’re at. The worst thing any of us can do is spend time reading about all the very successful people who are doing what we want to do and they’re younger and their resumes are much longer and more fruitful. UNLESS you can be inspired by this, stop googling and get to work! Get to doing what you love because like Ann says, it ain’t over ’till you’re dead 🙂

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