The first half of my softball season came to an end last night.

But then again it hasn’t really started.

In a season that’s supposed to run ten games, yesterday was supposed to be game #5, but like three other games so far this year, we fell victim to a rain out. At the halfway mark of a ten game season we are 0-1. My statistics for the first half of the year? Well, I’m batting 1.000 (4-4, two singles, a double, and a home run, 3 runs, 2 RBI) and I’ve got a fielding percentage to match (7 put outs, including two double plays). I was all worried that my rapidly aging carcass wasn’t going to be able to produce, but if the small sample size holds true, I’ll probably get a call from the Cubs to play third sometime after the All-Star break (I am a shortstop by birth).

Or maybe I won’t. I guess I’m ok with that. I worry that if I played baseball professionally I’d learn to hate the game. The same logic holds with music–I’m glad that I’m tone deaf and unable to really play an instrument–I love music so damn much and I worry that if I was too inside of it I’d get too critical of it and I’d see holes where there were not holes and I would feel resentment where I should only know admiration. There is as much room on my shelf for Jawbreaker as there is for David Allan Coe as there is for Aceyalone as there is for Joanna Newsome as there is for Owen as there is for Miles Davis. I am constantly amazed by the sheer scope of music and how on any given day I can read somebody’s blog and find a musician or a group I’ve never heard of and by the end of the day wonder how it was I ever lived my life without it being part of the soundtrack.

I used to be worried about cred, but then I realized cred is an internal thing. We are dynamic beings who live through different experiences, who feel different things on different days. Being prisoner to your own gimmick has gotta be hell for the people who suffer through it.