  People are often flummoxed to hear that I "used" to be a musician--and they aren't usually sure what that means, how it is possible, or how I got this way. So, here it is. Since I was eleven, I played music in bands--throughout high school, college, and up into my late twenties/early thirties. My performing career came to an end one February evening in 1997. I had just moved to Kent a year earlier and loathed the idea of starting my musical career over again (moving every three years will do that to you). I was playing a solo set at a folk festival--it was the first time I had worked up the initiative to book and play a gig in six months. Before moving, I had been playing solo gigs in my previous home town, Columbus, Ohio. I'd had it with the politics and infighting that accompanied every band I played with and figured that if I wanted it done right--I'd have to do it myself. I was content to play gigs in incredibly small clubs in front of a dozen or so people who were at least pretending to pay attention. Many of my former band mates had bigger aspirations. The guitarist from my first band--when I was eleven, would end up performing in a string of mustache metal bands that played $200 gigs at biker bars and roller rinks until he went bald and his band fired him.
One long-time music collaborator made several attempts to become a career musician, each ending in a melodramatic implosion. Afterwards, he would sell all his musical equipment, then taking a job as a maintenance man or a short order cook. Within a year or two, he'd pick up a guitar to play with friends, the friends would form a band, then write a bunch of songs, beginning another ill-fated stab at glory.
Yet another former badnmate actually came closest to the prize. He hooked up with some guys and formed a very popular alternative band in the late 90s. Unfortunately, their sound was about five years too late and they fizzled out under a bizarre record company deal that forbid them from playing or recording even though the label was slowly going out of business. I was four songs into that folk festival set when I realized that I no longer had any idea why I was standing there. I had totally lost touch with what I enjoyed about playing music and was irritated with everything: pissed that things were running late, annoyed that the person who introduced me couldn't get my name right, honked off that I couldn't hear myself in the monitors, and angry that I was standing here, alone, singing my heart out for yet another crowd that probably wouldn't notice if I keeled over dead. I was playing on a festival bill with a few dozen other performers--most of whom were marginally talented, pasty, middle-aged white guys singing songs about trains.
I despised them because I felt that if I didn't walk away right at that moment, I'd eventually end up as one of them. That euphoric feeling hadn't been around in some time. So long, in fact, that I had forgotten how it felt. I finished my song. In a moment I'd put my guitar in its case. Even to this day, I've never taken it back out again. I've never written a song, played for fun in my living room, jammed with friends, or performed music in any way at all.
I'd always said I would play music until it didn't feel right anymore. Standing there in front of twenty apathetic folkies, listening to the dimming sustain ring off my last chord, I knew that time had come. I knew I'd miss it if I quit, but I knew I'd eventually hate it if I didn't. As the guitar faded away, I gently nodded my head, and said a quiet "Thank you" as I walked off the stage. 
