'Retto Ruminations
By: Amy Sciarretto
Last updated May 6th , 2010

I try my best never to take anything for granted. Like right now. As I am laying on my couch watching Artie Lange's Beer League, trying to battle the nausea that comes with taking a painkiller, due to a massive sinus infection that causes me to feel like my teeth are going to fall out, I am remembering how I felt yesterday, when my sinuses weren't hating me and I didn't want to punch them in the face. When I felt totally normal. I don't get how people take painkillers recreationally because they do a number on my tummy.  I spent the entire day at Citizen's Bank Park with two friends and it was the best day ever. It felt like summer. It tasted like summer. It smelled like summer. And their company, their presence and their conversation elevated my mood. But a day in the 90+ degree sun did a number on me and I'm drained right now, nauseous and sore. I wish I felt like I felt earlier today and yesterday, with no exhaustion or sinus pressure that makes me want to punch my mouth in the face. Wink wink.

This simple discomfort, which I know shall pass within the next day or so, reminded me of how lucky I am to have a cool job that I always dreamed of having! How fucking rad is it to work with music, to expose bands to people and people to bands? I don't ever take that fact for granted, even though I worked my ass off since high school to get where I am and to be able to have a job that I love because when you love what you do, you're alive. I earned it. When you spend at least eight hours of your day, or at least the prime daylight hours, doing something, you should remember that you are blessed and fortunate to be in this position. I never forget that fact. However, I often see many folks who are.

Sure it can be quite the brain/emotion taxer, because working in the music industry is a lifestyle, not a job or a career, even. "Career" would be a mild way of describing it! It's a way of life, where you are more on call than a doctor that delivers babies for a living. So if you're out with, say, your boyfriend and his dad in California on a Sunday afternoon for brunch, a text asking about a photo pass that was requested and arrange by you for a show back east can come in and require your immediate attention. Or you can be enjoying a football game at Lincoln Financial Field with your dad on a chilly Sunday afternoon in November when a call comes in about an interview someone wants you to do that could  have waited till official business hours on Monday. These instances did occur in my life. I addressed them on spec, but that's because my jobs are a lifestyle and they are something that I do love and care about, and taking those few minutes out of my personal, weekend time wasn't that much of an issue. While there are times when I don't deal with work situations on the weekend, since there has to be "Amy" time and some separation and semblance of a "life," there are many times that I do deal with things as they fall into my lap at inopportune times. 

I definitely recognize that there are frustrations that any job carries. But at the end of the day, I remember how lucky I am to enjoy and get immense satisfaction - cue Rolling Stones melody here - from what I do as a job. I couldn't ask for better jobs. I get to do what I love. Fuck the rest, to loosely paraphrase Little Miss Sunshine's Paul Dano.

However, I have experienced conversations with peers lately who seem to have forgotten why they got into this world of rock 'n' roll and all its craziness and I invite anyone reading this who may have started to get jaded, bitter and cynical and who have lost some of the luster of this field to remember why they chose to travel this road.  Times are tough. CD sales are in the shitter. Magazines are folding and ad pages are disappearing. Employees are doing the work of three or four people. Jobs are combined or eliminated. Everyone is at carrying capacity. But at the end of the day, this is rock 'n' roll and no matter how taxed we think we may be, there is always room for a smile. 

There is always that second where you need to stop, step back, take a deep breath, suck it down into your lungs and exhale it, until every molecule of frustration leaves your body and your mind. Clear the thoughts and remember that this is a fun field. That are people out there who, as Michael Bolton says in Office Space, have to clean shit up. Be glad that's not your job. Sure, it needs to be done and I have mad respect for people who do those jobs, but do you want it to be done by you? So remember that when you get annoyed by an email; when you don't feel like responding to a pitch or making a pitch; when you don't feel like dealing with someone. Imagine if you were dealing with people who were much less pleasant or if the circumstances were much more difficult. Suppose you had George Clooney's occupation in Up in the Air, where you fly from city to city to let Americans now they've been downsized. I am serious. So many people get so jaded and so far removed from the reasons that inspired them from the beginning.  I invite them to take this moment to remember the reasons. The right ones. I have to do it myself sometimes. This is rock 'n' roll. If you had to answer to a suit and tie or to a parent or to a hard-nosed supervisor, you'd be wishing that your day consisted of listening to a stream of music or to replying to an email asking you what your intentions are in terms of coverage on a band, show or event. I have made the concerted effort to respond to everything that falls on my desks. Or inbox. Sometimes my replies may be short or curt - I call it efficient and to the point, and of course, no bullshit - but isn't that better than, as Phil Collins says, no reply at all? I encourage everyone to do the same. Remember. Remind. Repeat. 

Maybe this scenario doesn't apply to many of my readers, who may be working those not so glamorous jobs and who read this column for my insightfully charming way of pulling back the curtain to show you what life is like as a journalist and handler of rock musicians! But you are the inspiration. You do what you have to do. I want so many of my frustrated peers to remember why they do what they do and to remember the days of idealism, the days of dreaming about the perfect job and now having it. Don't ever take that for granted. ~ Amy Sciarretto

[Tags] Metal, Rock

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