Whenever I become impressed by a
particularly creative array of new
excuses I’ve come up with, or start to
organize an elaborate pity party for
myself, I turn to Ray Charles. I don’t
often listen to his music, but I always
think about Ray when I need a kick in the
buttinski. He was a broke, blind,
minority who was orphaned by the age
of fifteen and raised in the “colored part
of town” in a time when slavery wasn’t
all that distant of a memory, and he went
on to become one of the most influential
and successful American musicians of
all time. Basically, he wasted no time on
excuses.
Any little woe-is-me-ism that I try to