PatBlogahan.com

I’m really not one to be macho. In fact, when I’m not on stage, I’d probably rather hang back. Yeah, I get on a story tangent or jokes roll here and there but when I’m not among friends or people I’m close to and I’m not at meet and greets, I like to observe rather than take the spot light.
With that said, how could I resist? It was as if it was the worlds biggest challenge and the prize was bigger than what my imagination could drum up. Losing this proposition meant nothing. What I mean is, not succeeding would mean everything I would do would equal nothing or at least feel like that.
I’m not sure when it happened. It may have been in Sedona. Maybe in San Francisco. It actually could have happened in Erie when I was a child. I remember crying a lot at night as a kid. Not because I was scared or needy, I cried because I felt this hopelessness that I couldn’t fix everyone’s sadness. It was horrifying to think that the people I loved would one day leave me, at least physically. I wasn’t scared for me. I was scared for them. I felt like I should have been able to prevent it and learning that I couldn’t made me feel this deep sorrow that I never shared with anyone.
What does all this mean? I think it means this: music came to me then. Like some sort of answer. Like a response from the Universe for my hopelessness. And as I learned how to use it and control it and ask for things directly related, I started to feel overwhelming moments of joy. I felt like a huge impenetrable line of people shifted slightly to make room for me to pass. I feel like when I passed through I was wondering in the dark for years, unable to know what it was I was looking for or doing or learning or supposed to do. It felt like I traded in my youth at that very moment for a huge assignment card that I couldn’t read.
As time moved and I kept searching, things went well. Then times went dark. Then they went great. Then very dark. And now I am here. As I look back, I realize that what I chose in those days was the slow road to self awareness. I chose the big stuff. The heaviest bowling ball. And as I gave it my best go, it went down a never ending lane at a snails pace and has slowly and surely been picking up momentum for all this time as though the lane had a slight down hill pitch to it.
I learned not so long ago that I was given this choice and these gifts because that’s what I asked for. Maybe not as directly as, “Please let me sing well” but I definitely asked for a vehicle to board to possibly do something for someone. When I see people smile, when I have Trainettes of all shapes and ages dance and sing, when people cry with me and we remember our loved ones that were lost or found, it all fills me with a love that I get to store and spread at the next place and the cycle continues from one day to the next. For even just one brief moment, to see a person light up because of something I have done or said or had someone else say or do, I feel like the ball picks up more momentum to spread love and togetherness. I was just the one who pulled it from the rack. You are the ones who make it roll.
Thank you for helping me spread this love from town to town in so many countries. I am so grateful.

Love, Pat