I lost my voice once

I got laryngitis in the Summer of 1989. I had been on tour for six straight weeks and my vocal chords took a beating. I sat down next to my bassist, Tommy and I said, “Dude. I think its over”. We both wept. That’s when we wrote the power ballad, “I Can’t Believe its Over (I Wept)”.

A piece of me died that year. I got a cat to fill the void. I named him after the late drummer from my band, Billy.  Billy really was late all of the time. We almost missed a gig in Moscow once because of him.  Thankfully we made it because the people in Idaho are really nice. Did you know they had potatoes there?

Confession. That story isn’t completely true.  I’ve never been to Moscow, Idaho. I’ve also never had laryngitis.

I did lose my voice once though.  In Middle School always thought it would be cool to lose my voice. You’d get some attention and it would be kind of nice to not have to worry about talking for once.  I also wanted braces so bad once when I was in 5th grade that I put aluminum foil on my teeth and pretended to have them. Not sure which was worse: the act of putting foil on my teeth or that three kids believed me.

Anyhow, I lost my voice once. It was not fun like my tween-self counterpart thought it would be.  Not only was it uncomfortable, it was extremely frustrating.  Everytime I would try to speak it came out in puffs of air and a squeaky sound that was rivaled only by the prepubescent versions of Hanson.

The harder I would try to speak, the worse it sounded.

The same can be said for anyone who is hot pursuit of their dreams.  We work hard at our goals.  We go to sleep late and wake up early. We’re spending hours of each day focused on our craft.

Then without warning we lose our voice. The brand that we worked so hard to build is not even recognizable anymore. We keep pushing on strong but that only makes it worse.

Work hard at your awesome, but wear yourself too thin.  Let the world hear your voice, but make sure it never changes. Always be yourself.

Your voice is uniquely yours. Don’t ever let it die.

Oh… and that was terribly hard putting a picture of Hanson on my blog