Bored Like A Rock Star

One of my clients was on tour with a rock band – I’m talking, like, major rock band. She was the assistant band manager, which meant, among her other bazillion duties, she set up all the pre-show and after-show events for screaming hysterical fans.

I had a lot of questions for her.

I pictured myself alone backstage with screaming, hysterical fans, entering the room one after the other to get a selfie and a signature, ecstatic to be in my presence, unable to speak they’re so excited, experiencing the greatest moment of their lives.

From my non-celebrity perspective this sounds awesome: to be able to give that much joy to someone simply by being there. Sign me up!

Not so fast. My client quickly popped that bubble.

Apparently, anything can get old. This band had been doing autographs for years. It was part of the job description, just like playing their guitar solos, doing Rolling Stone interviews, and flying to cities all over the world. Hard to believe being a rockstar can start to feel like writing TPS reports, but I guess anything can. With enough time and repetition, our work becomes a chore – any work, even being a world-famous, widely adored, generously paid rock and roll god.

This is liberating, isn’t it?

We can let go of the idea that there is an ideal job out there that we don’t have. And we can look at the job we do have, perhaps flattened out under the weight of time, and find a way to blow it up again.

What if the rock star purposefully fucked up one of their solos, like really fucked it up, or dropped into a hellish off-key rendition of Mary Had a Little Lamb? What if that same rock star decided, backstage one night, to share a road story with one of those screaming fans? Or just to scream as loud as them? With them.

We’re not as bound by time as we think. Our sentence can be pardoned at any time, as easily as slipping a finger off a guitar string to change a chord and disrupt the same old song.