Time

Thank you for stopping by! This post is about giving you some insight into my motivation to launch this project. My name is Sarah Ford. I live in a suburb north of Orlando, Florida. I had a pretty exciting career as a singer and character actress at Walt Disney World for 16 years. I also did a 6-month contract with Tokyo Disney Land. I have run my own business as a private music instructor since 1999, teaching violin, voice, piano, and a little cello and guitar. I have two children, born in 2008 and 2010. Wanting a solid place to land once my career as a singer reached the end of its shelf life, I went back to school and earned a Master's degree in Social Science Education in 2011. I'm in my mid-40s, a stay-at-home mom of 2 adorable children, and I am wondering, "What now?" I hope to teach social studies in a few years, after my youngest starts school. I'm burned out on teaching music lessons after 13 years, as I've always been lucky if even 5% of my students actually practiced with regularity. I need to do something creative. The allure of the Internet is too hard to resist. I miss the regular conversations with adults that I used to take for granted before motherhood. I enjoy Facebook, but at the end of the day (not the British “at the end of the day” that means the way things turn out after all is said and done –I mean, at the end of any ol’ ordinary day), I feel like I have accomplished very little for my life if I’ve spent it on Facebook, even though I learn a lot from political debates, get a lot of writing practice, and stay up on the latest with every person I’ve ever known. Though I'm nurturing my children quite diligently, though I am proud of them, I am personally at a standstill. I don't ever want to live through them. My mom was a really great person, but she lived through me at times, and it would often strain our relationship.  I don't ever want to stop thinking of myself as a work-in-progress. I used to love composing lyrics and music, and I've always wondered if I am up to composing an entire musical.

It’s really hitting me how fast life goes by. FORTY-FIVE! How the hell am I forty-five already? I can remember Vietnam and Watergate on the evening news, but still, MAN, how did time just blur by like that? I heard a Lewis Black clip on Spotify the other night about turning 60. It’s funny as hell, but it also left me feeling that dark urgency to make something really amazing while I still have a chance.

Lewis Black – Hitting 60

Then there’s “Time” by Pink Floyd. Those lyrics always get me.

Ticking away the moments
That make up a dull day
Fritter and waste the hours
In an off-hand way

Kicking around on a piece of ground
In your home town
Waiting for someone or something
To show you the way

Tired of lying in the sunshine
Staying home to watch the rain
You are young and life is long
And there is time to kill today

And then the one day you find
Ten years have got behind you
No one told you when to run
You missed the starting gun


And you run and you run
To catch up with the sun
But it's sinking

Racing around
To come up behind you again
The sun is the same
In a relative way
But you're older

Shorter of breath
And one day closer to death

Every year is getting shorter
Never seem to find the time

Plans that either come to naught
Or half a page of scribbled lines

Hanging on in quiet desperation
Is the English way

The time is gone
The song is over
Thought I'd something more to say

Home
Home again
I like to be here
When I can

When I come home
Cold and tired
It's good to warm my bones
Beside the fire

Far away
Across the field
Tolling on the iron bell
Calls the faithful to their knees
To hear the softly spoken magic spell...

So here we are, then. I’m not that young. Life’s not that long. And there’s no time to kill today.