Revisiting the days gone by

Dr. Mills General

Its been said that its good to have a career change every 10 years or so. I think if I did that i’d be 130 years old by now so I obviously subscribe to the theory of changing careers frequently. Piano tuning, piano restoration, musician, music stores, live music production, truck driving, broadcasting, jingle writing, advertising, writing, house building, public speaking, sales, real estate developing, web developing, coding, startup entrepreneur, real estate brokerage, video editing, investment banking for technology startups, investment banking for real estate development, Dean of Technology at CULA and most recently I have launched a new path, children’s book author. It has been very useful to be able to draw on multiple professional disciplines in order to solve problems with varied approaches. They give people names like “renaissance man” and “polymath” to people who behave this way through history but seriously I just think its a mixture of attention deficit and a complete ignorance of limitation. I look back on all of my mini careers with both fondness and a deep resistance to never do it again. I’m not one to go back to places to revisit experiences because I feel like there is more to discover in this short life but on occasion I get the opportunity to return to the stage and relive my rock days for a moment in time. I have recently been privileged by an invitation to sit in with the Paulo Coelho band which has become a semi regular occurrence. The venue is the legendary Bitter End in Manhattan’s west village. Paulo is an extremely talented singer, songwriter and multi instrumentalist and being able to perform with him without the burden of rehearsals, production, negotiations or equipment setup or pull down. In addition, this revisiting of my roots has led me to start writing again and I have written a new album for the first time in a long time and I am recording the album entitled Bourbon, Words and Rusty Fingers with Paulo at his studio in New Jersey. It will get released sometime in 2016 although selling it is not my motivation. I just felt it needed to be in the world. These things have a way of building up without your knowledge and when given the opportunity they want to get out. Meanwhile here is a little moment from a recent show at the Bitter End.