This Is Dave Place

Something To Prove

I’ve never been a big sports fan, but I’m starting to get into football more. I watched a program on Tom Brady last night called “The Brady 6”. The show was about how Tom got into the NFL. It said that he was the 199th pick of the 2000 draft. This means that there were 198 players picked before him that year. It also said that he was the 7th quarterback picked that year, which pretty much means the last quarterback.

The show was very inspiring to me because it spoke to my heart about what perseverance can do. Brady was always an underdog in high school, in college, and in the NFL, but he ended up becoming one of the best players of all time. It said that statistically he wasn’t very strong, he was not fast, he was not a great passer, and he really didn’t have any traits to be a great quarterback. That’s often how I feel: I’m not an amazing singer, I’m not a profound lyricist, or an amazing songwriter, I’m not an over-the-top entertainer. I don’t have any stand-out traits that would make me a majorly successful musician.

But it said that Tom Brady had “intangibles”, which meant qualities that statistics can’t prove. Heart, brains, focus, diligence, determination… Things that don’t transcribe on paper. It said that Tom Brady had a chip on his shoulder and something to prove. I feel like a lot of us can relate to that. I feel that I have something to prove to the masses and that because the externalities are not right (I’m still young, inexperienced, signed to small record label, not a “big name”, I don’t have relatives in high places), I have not had the opportunities needed to become a truly successful musician.

It’s hard for me to relate the feelings I felt watching the video. I felt so inspired by the fact that you do not need to be the best or get the perfect opportunity, you just need to constantly work diligently to prepare for the opportunities you are given. The quarterbacks that got picked before Tom Brady are all no-name guys who didn’t survive the NFL. Brady survived because he worked day and night, and has had constant focus. He is still succeeding because he still believes he has something to prove. What a story.

Do you have something to prove? Have you seen others get opportunities that you didn’t? I know I have. But I don’t let it bring me down. I let it fuel me. Don’t ever give up, just keep getting better.

Future

The future is a scary thing to think about. It is completely unknown. We have plans and we have ideas about what will happen tomorrow, next week, and next year. But in the back of our mind, we know that we have no control over our future. Anything could happen. Anything.

A lot of people are planning on the world ending this year. I don’t know if that will happen or not, but either way I am going to continue to live my life the way I have been. I’ve been living on a balance between being happy in the present and putting in effort towards my future. I think everyone should try to find that balance between living for today and hoping/planning for tomorrow. Many people get a lot anxiety about thinking about tomorrow. Don’t think too hard. Today is most important.

The future is an important thing to think about, but not to dwell on. Never dwell or fret on things that are completely out of your control. And the future is definitely out of your control.

One of my favorite lyrics from Switchfoots says, “This is your life and Today is all you’ve got now. This is your life and Today is all you’ll ever have.” The present is all you will ever see or be able to physically perceive. Don’t forget that.

If You Build It, They Will Come

I don’t know if you know the movie Field Of Dreams. But pretty much, Kevin Costner renovates an old baseball field in hopes that players will come play. He builds it, and they come.

I am doing something similar with my band, and this blog, and my life. I want to build something that people can come to and feel ok. They can feel respected, they can learn, and they can be helped. I want to slowly make it my career to help you get through life. I want lighten your burden and make your journey a little easier.

So, I am building, and I am hoping that the masses will come. If it never works out, so be it, I will never put myself down for trying. If you feel that you have a passion or a calling, I would like to inspire you to do the same. Go for it! Build it, because if you don’t they will never come.

I am glad that you are willing to come with me on my journey. And I am glad to join you on yours. Hopefully I will see you at one of our concerts soon enough. Or I will just continue to speak to you through this blog. Either way, I am happy and excited about it.

Show Me Love

A good friend of mine told me he really likes the Phone Calls From Home song “Show Me Love”. I listened to it today and was reminded of the message it told. I want to share that message with you and the reason behind the song…

I hate mornings. They are the worst part of the day for me. Sometimes I wake up feeling that I’m just stuck in rut. I have thoughts and dreams of a glorious life filled with all of the beauties and experiences that this earth has to offer. I can feel God’s presence in the moments of true bliss when I am just imagining an outgoing life of travel, of bringing a positive message to people that need to hear it, of lifelong memories with friends, of achievements beyond what I thought possible, of challenges that I know I can overcome, and of love and happiness. And then I realize that I am wake up in the same bed every day and going through the same dull motions. I want my life to be colorful, but it just feels grey. I wake up and my life is grey.

I tell myself that big things can happen slowly, I just need to be patient, hard working, and faithful. But nonetheless, it is hard to wake up to the same day over and over and over again. So the song, Show Me Love, is a plea: Show me how to live a fulfilling life even when most of my days feel meaningless. In my heart, I know a purposeful life doesn’t have to be about the glits and the glory. It is about what I’m feeling inside. It is about the little things. It’s not external, it’s internal. So the point isn’t to ask God (or the universe or whoever you ask) to give you beautiful and glorious moments throughout the day. No, it’s about changing your perspective to see that your days really are full of magnificent moments, its just up to you to appreciate them. We just need to open up our eyes and grasp what it means to be alive. I mean think about it, Earth is the perfect distance from the Sun so that we can all live peacefully on it. We have abundant amounts of air, water, and food. We have free will and can do and think as we please. We have the capacity and power to live and love every day, it’s just up to us to consciously experience it.

So, if you don’t mind, I’m giving you a daily challenge (while quoting my own lyrics):

Wake up love
With open eyes, show me more than just nothing
Look
Look out love, look outside the day’s calling

Create Your Own Luck

The more opportunities you give yourself, the more chances you get to be “lucky”. Sometimes I’ll talk to people about our band and they’ll say, “You’re lucky you get to do what you love, your lucky you got signed to a record label, your lucky you have a booking agent that books your tours” and I’ll say, “It’s not about luck.”

I am very blessed with my friends and family who have supported me and have been a helping hand throughout the years. I am blessed to be able to have an ear for music. I am blessed to have a brain that lacks common sense most of the time, but can think deeply and creatively. But those blessings came with choices. I chose to be nice to people as often as possible, therefore it is that much easier to make friends. I chose to lock myself in my room throughout my teen years and therefore I learned to play music. I chose at a young age to try hard in school (mainly because that’s what everyone tells you to do), and therefore I have been able to slowly develop thinking analytically.

So luck and blessings come, but usually at the cost of effort, patience, persistance, discipline, and outgoingness. The best opportunities come when you do not expect them and when you are actually ready and able to accept them. Memorize that last sentence.

We got our booking agent, Ashley, by chatting with a rocker guy in a hot tub in Southern California. We asked if we could go on tour with him and he said to email his booking agent. We emailed her and asked if we could meet with her. Then we had coffee with her and played our music for her on acoustics in a Starbucks parking lot, and she decided to work with us. So we created this professional relationship with her by chatting with a dude in a hot tub. This happened because we were expecting it to happen and because our band was at a level that could have a booking agent.

SO… Find the direction you want to go in, and work toward it. You don’t have to chase Luck. If you are ready for it, Luck will find You. Just put in effort, patience, persistance, discipline, and be outgoing. Work hard and let life happen.

Popularity/Fame is not the Destination

Some of you, like me, have hopes of being famous. Others, maybe the high school crowd, have hopes of being popular in your school. To me they are the same thing, high school popularity and national fame. To some people, it is the goal, and to others, it is the means to a different goal.

I realized my goal wasn’t just to be famous when I realized that all fame meant was that people know who you are. People like Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian rose to fame partly because of their family, partly because they made sex tapes, partly because they got into reality shows, and, I’m sure, partly because they are both talented, right? If that’s the sure fire way to get famous, than maybe being “famous” isn’t the only objective. Along the same lines, if hooking up with the most popular guy or popular girl in school can get you popular, maybe being popular isn’t the perfect goal.

I think a better perspective of wanting to be popular or famous is saying, I want to be famous for being myself and use my fame for a bigger purpose than to serve myself. Same goes with being popular…

If someone said to you, “You can be more popular, you just have to be cooler, you have to get into more trouble, you have to go to more parties.” Is it worth being popular if that is not who you are? Or maybe you are someone who likes getting into trouble and going to parties and someone said, “To be more popular in this prestigious school, you need to clean up, suck up to the teachers, be a prime athlete, and get perfect grades.” If that isn’t you, is it worth changing yourself to be popular?

Fame is the same scenario. If a big-shot manager said to me, “I think you have a lot of potential kid. I can make you into a star. You would just have to sing these songs we wrote about partying, living for the moment, and our sure-fire hit about cheating on your girlfriend (kinda like that one Enrique Inglesias song).” Under those circumstance, I’d have to politely decline fame. Of course I’d like to be famous, but if I can’t be famous being myself and following through with what my fame can do to help others, I don’t think it is worth it.

The same theory can go for you. The more you know yourself, your personality, your goals, your beliefs, your closest friends/family; the more you know where to draw certain lines. If being popular/famous means changing who you are, than maybe it’s not worth it for you. After all, fame is not supposed to be the goal or the destination; it is supposed to be only part of the journey of you finding who you are.

The See-Through Generation

Somewhere between Reality TV and Twitter, I had this feeling that we are the Transparent Generation. Nothing is hidden. If I want to know about someone, I can just look them up on Facebook, or Google, or LinkIn, or Twitter. If I’m patient and motivated, I’ll find them.

Whether you are a celebrity or an average joe, your cellphone is always on you and you are most likely on the internet daily. So your friends can contact you no matter what. There isn’t anywhere to hide anymore. You can’t hide anything. You are expected to be there for the world.

My mom was telling me that back in the 40’s and 50’s, if a celebrity was having a baby out of wedlock, they’d try to get out of the limelight quickly so it didn’t affect their career. That’s not the case today. The more ruined people are, the more attention they get. Look at Charlie Sheen, I feel like he was the most popular guy of the year. Weird how the times change.

In a time like this, we all have to try our best to be careful and use our discretion with what we let out into the open, what we put online. Because this world today is see-through. Whatever you believe, whatever standards you may have, whatever you are trying to portray yourself as; make sure it shows correctly.

I’m sure I could go on Facebook and find 20 people with revealing profile pictures in less than 5 minutes. I could Google almost any female celebrity and find a bikini shot or a nude shot of them online for everyone to see. Girls, do you want that for yourself? Do you want people to see all of you? Do you want to leave nothing for the sake of mystery?

I never want to show all of my cards. I want people to know me, but I still want some of me for myself, for my loved ones, and for my significant other. I may live in the see-through generation, but you’ll never get all of me. I want to be authentic, but I always want to leave some things mysterious.

Isn’t not knowing, sometimes, the most intriguing thing of all?

Better

I am admittedly not the best singer or songwriter or musician or entertainer. I’m not better than most professionals. I’m not the best writer. I’m not the best anything, but I feel I am good enough to at least try and do the things I want to do.

I gave up on trying to be the “best”. I just want to be myself and hope that people like it. Not to say that I don’t want to become a better singer, songwriter, entertainer, etc. I do. But it’s not the singular thing I am thinking about. I will get better with time (hopefully). But I think it is more important for me to follow my heart and follow what feels right.

I don’t want you to always feel like you need to be better than someone else. Don’t ever cave into the pressure of needing to be the best. What does the best even mean? Sure, maybe in running, it is easy to say that the best runner is the one that crosses the finish line first. But in most other situations, I can’t say what being the best means objectively. Is the best musician the one who sells the most records or the one who changes the most hearts? Is the best student the one who gets into the best school, or the one who truly decides to follow their passion? It seems more subjective than objective. To me, being the best just means trying your hardest to be who you were meant to be.

Someone left me this quote. It fits perfectly when it comes to wanting to be better or the best. The Suess knows how it is done.

“Today you are you, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is more youer than you.”
~Dr. Seuss

Keep Your Head On Your Shoulders

No matter what happens to me in my life, I hope I can keep a strong head on my shoulders.

I used to hope for fame and success. I still hope for that, but more importantly, I primarily hope that I can keep grounded on my way there. If becoming successful means that I lose myself, I do not want success. If becoming famous means that I stop being real, I do not want fame. There are more important things in life than my dreams. Some of these things include my health, my stability, my loved ones, my mind, and my soul.

There is close to nothing more important than being real and being true to yourself. No matter where life takes you, your peaks and your valleys, try your best to keep a good head on your shoulders. Keep grounded. Keep stable. Protect yourself and your sense of reality.

In The End

Someone told me recently that they lost a friend who was diagnosed with cancer at the age of 4, and died a few days ago at the age of 12. There are few things that slap you in the face harder than death. It causes you to question a lot of things about life. I think that those questions are important and often overlooked.

Look, I know you are stressed about school or work or awkward friendships or a dysfunctional family or that habit that you can’t get away from or all of the other little day-to-day problems that fill your life. But sometimes you just have to drop the problems and bask in the feeling of one simple question. In the end, what truly matters? Man I love that question. I even wrote a song about it (I’ll let you guess the title). The question digs deep into your heart like a shovel and plants itself there, I like the feeling it gives me. My palms sweat a little and my stomach sinks and I think to myself, what am I stressing about and what am I living for?

I don’t want to answer that question for you. I don’t want to tell you what to think or what to believe. But I’m sure that that boy who was diagnosed with cancer before he even knew what cancer was could have told you what life should be about. Don’t continue to keep yourself too busy to ask yourself about what truly matters in your life. It is one of those questions in which the answer is truly worth living for. Don’t wait.