Dreams, wishes and goals....

Everybody has them.....but not everybody makes them happen.

As a child I was obsessed with music, and singing, and writing songs. I would literally lock myself in my bedroom.....crank up the 'record player' to full volume....grab the microphone stand
that was found at the rubbish tip and face the mirrored wall and then transport myself mentally to being onstage and singing to a crowd. As my teenage years began this became a safe happy escape from my increasing feeling of not fitting in.

I had singing lessons, entered talent quests (thanks to the strenuous urgings from my Mum) and always carried the dream of one day singing professionally.

The magical day came on Melbourne Cup Day 1985...I had missed out on getting to the TAB with my bet...I wanted to put $20 each way on 'What a nuisance'......and of course it won. So after work I toddled down to my usual haunt....Jo Jo's Cocktail Bar in the mall in Brissy. Tuesday night was cocktail night...$2.00 cocktails woohoo! The evening progressed in a blue haze of 'Blue Lagoon's....my friends and I sat at our table next to the piano player...Wylie Reed and in a drunken haze I decided to ask if I could sing a song. Well we had been singing along all night and my friends started urging me to do it.

So over I went and asked if I could sing. Wylie said ok and we agreed on a song....I reached for the microphone and Wylie quickly brushed my hand aside and said " you don't need that" and started playin the intro to the song. Needless to say by the end of the first line of lyrics he had thrust the microphone back into my hand and away I went. What followed was a blur of booze, music, laughter, happiness as I sang song after song....the whole room was having a ball...it was one of the most memorable nights of my life...and yet...I can hardly remember it because of my state of drunkeness.

At some stage I rang Mum and Dad to tell them I was actually singing with a blues legend!!!! They drove into the city (a 45 minute drive mind you) and witnessed the last hour of the night.

The next morning I awoke fully clothed and staggered upstairs for my morning coffee. Mum was in fine form reliving the night...(which is the only way I know what happened really...ahh gotta love alcoholic black spots). She told me to check my pockets...and I found several slips of paper with phone numbers on them. All of them offers for me to sing in various duo's and one band.

I was too scared to call any of them. In the cold stark reality of soberness I could not take the step towards my dream.

Two days later the phone rang. Some guy called Desmond...(I had actually given him my number because he was looking for a lead singer in a cover's band and that was what I wanted to do most of all)...he wanted to know why I hadn't called him. In that moment my life changed forever. I took a tentative step towards something that until that point in time was just a dream.

I sang professionally for the next 6 years until unfortunately my preferred lifestyle of booze and cigarettes and partying took its toll on my vocal chords and I had to stop. That chapter of my life ended sadly....but I look back on it with great pride and happy memories.

To bring us to this day...I realise now that I have taken on my goal of sobriety and a new lifestyle with the same passion and depth of want as I did in my past with singing. I lose myself in imagining day to day living in the future when I have spent a whole year sober....two years...more. If I could make a dream become reality before....this is all the proof I need to indeed do it again.