There’s an old Broadway show tune that asks how you measure a year, which is made up of 525,600 minutes, and ironically about another virus pandemic…

It’s been a year since the tour ended and I flew home.

It’s been a year of pain, frustration, financial misery, despair and rage. I’ve spent most of that time sitting at home, literally counting the minutes as they tick by, all 525,600 of them. In that time, not much has changed. I’ve worked a few one-off jobs, a couple of recording sessions, and tried to see through the haze and make out some semblance of the shape of things to come. And yet everything is about to change—forever.

One year ago today I stood on stage with the Blue Man Group North American Tour for the last time. One year since I’ve touched a real sound system. One year since my future looked bright and rewarding.

As I have recounted in past blog posts; we were in Syracuse, New York when the entire performing arts industry was murdered by the douche-bag politicians that have enshrined themselves as dictators over the American people.

We got the call during load-in on March 12th that our run that week was being canceled. On March 13th we returned to the theatre to load out and then start flying home. At that time, we thought we would be off for a week or two, a month at most and then we would be able to return to the tour to finish out the rest of our schedule. On March 14th I flew home. I haven’t been back to work full time since.

The economic pain that the pandemic inflicted has been mind boggling. I earned less in 2020 than I have in any year since I was in college and working part time. And 2021 is shaping up to be even worse, which could end up being my worst year economically since high school if things don’t change soon. And by soon, I mean a matter of weeks, not months. There’s no way that I will be able to survive another year of this pain.

I’m sure that the rest of the industry won’t survive either. Many companies, producers, venues, artists and technical staff have already left the industry and won’t ever come back. We’re going to experience a brain drain the likes of which we’ve never seen before as our most skilled, experienced, and talented people leave for any other opportunity.

Tens of millions of hard working and gainfully employed people have been put out of work for no good reason other than fear and hysteria. The good for nothing scum sucking slugs who run our state and federal governments kowtowed to the fear and scare tactics of a few holier than thou government bureaucrats who themselves have not missed a single pay check this whole time. Countless millions of careers, lives, and businesses have been ruined by the draconian and unnecessary lockdowns and business restrictions placed on our industry and others over the past 12 months. Meanwhile the mega corporations who had the capital and resources to weather this storm have made more money than any other year in history because normal people had to buy their goods online instead of being able to visit brick and mortar shops.

I contend that the lockdowns were unnecessary.

I’ll say that again: I contend that the lockdowns were unnecessary.

If not for partisan political bickering and maneuvering; we could have gained control over the spread of this virus without resorting to the most fascist and totalitarian forms of rule we’ve seen since slavery was legal. And that in the long run we will realize that they did more harm than good. We have added nearly $6 TRILLION to the national debt and have lost many times that in personal income and business productivity and have ruined the minds of a generation of children who have been forced to sit in front of a screen all day long instead of interacting with their friends and teachers directly.

The realization of the real damage from this pandemic will not be measured in lives lost to the virus, but in the lives lost to bankruptcy, suicide, mental illness, apathy, and scorn for the modern political systems that caused this ruination.

And I don’t believe that we will go back to normal life as we knew it. Things have changed forever. This was a watershed moment for our species, and we failed.

My own career as a professional audio engineer is hanging by a thread. I have one last ditch attempt that I will make at trying to find full time work. And if that doesn’t work out, then I am saddened to say that I will be pursuing a change in career and will start school to be a truck driver.

Yes, I am already scheduled to start CDL school on April 14. If I can’t find a way to go back to work full time by that point, then I will have to kiss my 18 year career as an audio engineer good bye. Coming to this decision has not been easy. I have been mulling it over for nearly a year, since it became apparent that our tour wasn’t coming back any time soon. It has been the saddest and most gut wrenching process I have undertaken. And I know that I will hate every day of it.

If this one last attempt at finding full time work in the live sound or recording industries doesn’t pan out; I will spend every minute of every day for the next 25 years working a job that I hate and bitching and moaning and stewing over how a career that I loved was ruined by a bunch of selfish, egotistic, holier than thou, government bureaucrats (i.e. scum sucking slugs) who only care about the papers and books they will get to publish after they have ruined the lives of millions of ordinary people like me.

And then, maybe, in 25 or 30 years I’ll be able to retire and then finally die after finishing a career that I hated every minute of every day of.