If life is a series of journeys, do you love where you find yourself?

Last week, I was at the box office of the Miller Auditorium picking up my tickets and the guy at the next window was pissed.

“I spent three-hundred dollars,” he boomed at the young woman on the other side of the window. “What do I get for three-hundred dollars?”

She shrugged.

It was like a scene out of a prison movie as the guy on the inside (the prisoner) is shouting through the glass at the person on the outside (wife/ girlfriend/ lawyer). The guy on the inside ain’t happy, and there ain’t much the person on the outside can do to help.

Let me back up

In the mid-90s, I decided to write a novel. I’d spent the latter part of the 80s writing short stories, then pivoted to screenplays in the early 90s, and nothing had really panned out. It wasn’t the first time I’d tried novels, but it wasn’t a convenient time to try, either. We had one kid in diapers and another in the oven.

Also, I didn’t really know how to write a novel.

“Write what you know,” some a-hole once said. So I wrote a story about working for a computer company. “Put sex in it and it’ll sell,” someone else suggested. That was in direct violation of the previous advice, so my so-called sex scenes are pretty sad, really.

My big problem was I didn’t know much about life.

But I finished it and got an agent. It didn’t sell and that was that. I wrote another novel but the people I showed it to hated it. So I started a third.

Then I pivoted to making movies.

Meanwhile, in a parallel universe

Right around the time I started making movies, a group of four people in Boston formed the band Lake Street Dive. Rachel, the lead singer, has an amazing voice, and the musicians are top-of-the-line.

But they didn’t figure out how to be great right away.

It took them a few years and a couple of albums to hit their stride. Probably, they were awesome from the get-go, but there are a lot of great bands and sometimes you have to convince the public that you’re both good and here to stay.

I heard about them from an NPR Tiny Desk Concert. I don’t chase a lot of music or bands, but for me it was as close to an obsession as I get.

Last October, while walking the dogs around midnight, I ran into a neighbor coming home. They had been to the Lake Street Dive concert in Grand Rapids. It was a head-smacking moment as I realized that, as an adult, I’m allowed to go to concerts. So I looked up their tour schedule.

Which brings us back to the Miller Auditorium

The closest venue was at the Miller Auditorium in Kalamazoo, Michigan on the campus of Western Michigan University (Go Broncos!). I found two tickets in row six, smack dab in the middle, $140 total. Done.

Except they had an option for “VIP” tickets in the sofa lounge for an extra $170. I was intrigued as it seemed like a chance to meet the band, hang out, have some M&Ms or whatever before the show. There were no details, no sales page on why I’d want to opt for VIP tickets, so I passed.

When I picked up my tickets, I realized the guy at the next window shelled out for the VIP tickets only to learn that there was nothing there there. The $310 tickets were no better than the $140.

Maybe he and I had a similar journey in coming to that concert, finally seeing a band he has admired from afar, but he was going to leave afterwards with a bad taste in his mouth.

There was no sofa lounge. The only M&Ms at the venue were for sale at concessions. He was going to get no closer to the band than me, and I wish it could have been different for him.

As we say in the computer business, never confuse selling with installing.

Meanwhile, at My Writing Desk…

I completed the draft of complete rewrite of the novel I’d completed in 2021. If you recall, the feedback from that first versions was “meh.” So I chucked it and started over.

That first version was my $300 VIP tickets with nothing to show for the effort.

A novelist’s journey is not straight and simple. At least this novelist’s journey has not been straight or simple.