WINNER of May 2009's Song of the Year Songwriting Contest!!!

It has been nearly a year since I released my CD, "Thoughts of Home" on iTunes, Amazon Music, eMusic, Rhapsody and on my Official Music Site: www.davidlindbergmusic.com. I have entered songs in a few contests and have been trying to break into writing music for film and TV.

I entered the song, "Western Sky" from the CD in the International song writing contest called Song of the Year. It was selected as the winning song in the instrumental category for the month of May. This will enter it into Song of the Year, which is chosen at the end of 2009. Song of the Year also will now distribute the song to many high profile people in the music business, record labels, promoters, etc.

(You can listen to "Western Sky" by clicking play on the music player to the right of this article.)

I also had submitted another song for a critique from professional reviewers, with lyrics and vocals titled, "This is My Promise" which I wrote for wedding ceremonies and have performed many times. My hopes was to find out if it was good or not. I received the review which was rated with very high marks in all feedback categories.

I have a post on my music website with more details on the Song of they Year win and the critique. For more details, go to www.davidlindbergmusic.com

This was another milestone in my efforts to make music my career since leaving my corporate job in 2008.

Michael Jackson was quoted as telling a fan who asked him for his best advice in striving for success. His reply was to never give up, work hard and believe in yourself. He said to not allow yourself to be swayed from your goal by doubters. With the sudden passing of Michael Jackson, this meant so much to me at this point in my life! I have been a musician for over 40 years and have put it in the background for far too long. Now that I am trying to succeed and make a living from music, at this stage of my life, staying on course when I start to doubt myself has never meant more. Michael's words rang true to help me just when I was beginning to have doubts. He was much more "normal" than we all were led to believe! The memorial service showed how human he was... He helped people all over the world and he still helped me know that I can do this... If I Believe!

Michael Jackson crossed generations

I had not seen this video before of Michael Jackson performing live at the World Music Awards in 1996. If you watch it in it's entirety, one can only be mesmerized at likely the most amazing performer of our time, of our generation, and perhaps generations to come.

The video speaks for itself.

Baby Boomers - This has been a week of awareness of our mortality

Three cultural icons of our Baby Boomer Generation passed away this week and I will remember this week as a transition into increased awareness of the phases throughout our lives.


Edward Leo Peter "Ed" McMahon, Jr.
(March 6, 1923 – June 23, 2009)


Farrah Fawcett
(February 2, 1947 – June 25, 2009)


Michael Joseph Jackson
(August 29, 1958 – June 25, 2009)

Youth has a natural protection within it’s mind of foreverness. When you’re young, you have absolutely no idea of what forever means, and as we grow older, we realize that we will actually never know what forever means, but we grow very aware that we are never going to gain that knowledge! We all can remember when we were very young, when all we wanted to do was grow up, mostly so that we can make our own decisions. This really only enters our minds when we have been told by our parents to do something that we didn’t want to do. Some of us may actually experience knowledge of a family member or even a young friend dying, but we still will not realize the concept of death. Each day lasts forever as we are only in the moment of whatever toy or game we may be playing.

NOTE - (As a side note here, I have to say that I am obviously speaking from the perspective of having a happy youth. I have no way of knowing the horrors that some children all over the world experience of a life of hunger or war. These children lose their childhood innocence immediately as they struggle only to survive the day)

We then go through some various phases of life, searching for ourselves, combined with what our elders have told us and the experiences we hopefully learn from. Personally speaking, from my experiences, I look at life in segments of decades in relation to how our lives change.

• 20’s - These are the times of subtle change as we seem to slide from being cared for to rebelling direction in order to make our own choices. These are the years of showing ourselves that we have a better way...we will correct the mistakes we observed from all the years previous. These are actually the years when we make the most mistakes and yet, learn the most from them. We may not be aware of this or put corrections into action, but we retain these mistakes and they help us later.

• 30’s - I think of this as real mid-life, not physically or in lifespan, but in that we more or less, keep moving forward, as a ship at sea with no particular destination...working on whatever directions and paths we started in the previous decade. We don’t make a lot of big changes here. We partly think we made the correct choices or at least the changes we have to live with. I also lived through the most physical pain in my 30’s, most likely from the mistakes of foolishness of the previous years.

• 40’s - The age of enlightenment! This is still not awareness of mortality, but more so that it’s time to get serious about correcting the mistakes and pains of our lives. It is usually the time that both male and female go through what has been called, “the change”. For men, that has been labeled as going nuts and trying to be youthful. I personally think that the people who use this phrase are jealous of those who wake up, shape up and begin correcting their lives. We also begin to be more aware of loss of a parent or perhaps a friend of similar age, which adds to our thoughts of making changes that would lead us to that same end. We start to think about our careers and bad choices. We think we should eat healthier and exercise, especially if we have neglected those for so long. I made huge changes during this decade. After losing my father who died of a sudden heart attack, was a life time smoker and over-weight, I seriously started eating healthy, started exercising and lost nearly 100 pounds and never looked better, nor felt better in my whole life! This feeling good also made me question my marriage and futile efforts to wait for it’s problems to go away. I made the biggest, life impacting decisions of my life during my fourth decade.
  

• 50’s - As I am currently in this decade, I do not have the full perspective of it’s life effect, but I am on the ending years of it, so I do have some perspective. This has been a phase of re-thinking my career choices and realization that I have worked for nearly 22 years doing something with a pure purpose of providing for my family’s income and standard of living. This was not a bad thing, as it was a good job that allowed my family to live a middle income lifestyle...not rich, but not poor. I struggled to find ways to enable this job fulfill some purpose to my happiness and legacy, and only hit constant blockage, partly due to my own inadequacy and lack of direction and care of those who love life in a corporation. I ultimately found that I was just a square peg in a round hole environment. I began to search for what I could do for a living that would also feed my inner happiness. Many times throughout my life, I found that life or divine purpose made decisions for me. I am a profound advocate of “everything happens for a reason”. The hard part is that it may take years to discover that reason...but as I have told so many.... you WILL discover it!

I will obviously continue this effort as I gain the experience of life, but I have gained some insight as to what people in their next possible four decades may realize. I have seen and heard my mother, who is now 91 and living in a nursing home, suffering from Alzheimer’s Disease....tell me often, “David...you don’t know what it’s like to be.....(fill in the age)!” and I think I am starting to “understand her.” This week was a definite spike in this learning!

Boomster.com - Wealth of information for Baby Boomers

Photo from Boomster.com

In their own statement: "Boomster.com is an information and social network website for dynamic and experienced baby boomers interested in pursuing a full life. Through original articles, videos, and live interviews, boomster provides the latest information on careers and businesses, travel, volunteering, and a wide range of interests from wines to fly fishing to politics. Most importantly, it is a venue where members can meet like-minded people with whom they are able to explore ideas, exchange advice, and develop relationships and friendships."

The site is well organized and visibly pleasing to peak your curiosity and inspire you to find interests and career information that will align your passions with pursuits that will enhance your personal and professional goals.

A website of this type is exactly what Boomers need during the uncertain times that have been suddenly trust upon them, when they were beginning to think of how retirement would look.

Actually, the current economic crisis should be looked at as an opportunity and a wake up call to everyone. Now is the time for us to realize that we have been living our lives in a bit of a cloud of buying on credit and expecting a check to continuously slide into our bank accounts. The Baby Boomer generation has lived through some trying times to be sure, with social injustices, political greed and war, but we have not had to face the hardships that "The Greatest Generation" did during the "Great Depression". There was no unemployment compensation or government help. When the jobs were gone, so were the basic necessities of life, such as food and shelter. This is not to minimize the hardships that thousands are going through right now as so many are losing their homes.

Boomster offers a great deal of help and social connections with others all going through the same issues of life. Check Boomster out, join and begin to do some research on how to spend the future persuing your true passions.

If you would like to take a tour of Boomster before joining, click here.

Remembering and appreciating our fathers this Father’s Day

Photos of Dad's early years

I lost my Dad on December 21, 1989 and I think about and talk about him more as the years go by. It seems like the early hurt goes away but the yearning to talk to or see him increases as time goes by. My Dad was the life force and humor of our family. I don’t mean to say he was perfect...none of us can say that! He was flawed and I was quick to find those flaws when he was alive and I was younger. I basically got along with my Dad, but I often thought how I would be a better father than he was in many ways. I did do things differently, but that didn’t make me a more perfect father...just a different flawed father.

When we are young, we all think how we will do things better when we are parents. What actually happens is that we may try harder, but nature compensates by making us screw up in other ways. Everything in nature and life is about balance.

My wife never met my Dad. He died a few years before I met her and therefore she missed all the humor and wonderment he gave to us. That’s probably one reason I talk about him a lot. I tell her the stories about how he was basically the straight man. He did so many funny things, but usually didn’t laugh about them. All of us in the family laughed and he was never bothered about that. I think he knew he was making us happy.

My Dad never talked to me about the serious things in life. In fact, neither of my parents ever did that. It was what parents did in that generation. That was one thing my generation of Baby Boomers tried to do differently. We started talking to our children about life. My Dad’s generation let all that important information find their children though osmosis via the school of hard knocks...in other words, we learned it as we made mistakes. Now that I am older, I have no idea who had the better approach.

So everyday I think about my Dad since he died, I think of what it would be like to travel back in time and talk to him when he was a young man, even before he was married and had a family. I would love to talk to him about his fears, his hopes and dreams. I would love to talk to him on equal terms, about us having the same fears, hopes and dreams.

I also never hugged or said the words, “I love you” to him. I really regret that! We just never talked openly like that in my family. I make sure I say if often in my family. I even recently started forcing myself to hug my wife’s father. I have only shook his hand for hello and good-bye for the last 15 years. I recently just made my mind up to hug him instead, as I do to the rest of the family. I found, to my surprise, that he seemed to be waiting for it!

So this father’s day, make sure you show and say the things that he wants to hear. Think a bit of how you WILL want to do and say these things someday.....someday when it may be too late and then make yourself do it this Father’s Day. Once you do, it will be easy to continue from that point on. Give him a huge hug! It will be his best gift.

These are the things that matter while we are here! These are the things that last forever! These are the times to act, forgive flaws and show that he matters to you. No matter what mistakes a father makes, most of the time, they do want to know that something they did in their lifetime mattered!

Baby Boomer Father's Day idea - watch an old movie musical

Yes, there were the most popular male dancers, Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly, but although I still think Fred Astaire was the absolute overall best dancer of all time, because of his overall style and sophistication, Donald O'Conner was likely the best physically capable dancer of all. O'Conner was most likely much under rated due to being a comedic dancer and not taken as seriously in his time, but I sincerely doubt if Fred or Gene, or anyone else could have done the physical things that O'Connor could do.

This video is just one of many amazing dance numbers!



I still love spending an afternoon or evening watching these musical movies from the late 40's and early 50's! I suppose it's just that they remind me of my youth, sitting in the living room with my family, my parents still young and not having really a care in the world. Ah yes...being a kid and living in suburbia U.S. in the 1950's and 60's...we were blessed to have this time. I will never forget to appreciate that! It seems like the world lost it's innocence at the end of the 1960's...unless it was just me, growing up...

Enjoy this video and rent or find an old musical on TV this weekend...sounds like a nice Father's Day!

June 5th is not FRI, it's WED, World Environment Day

This is not the same as Earth Day. This is a day that started in 1972, as the United Nations established WED to bring the world's attention to our environmental crisis.

The National Holidays Examiner at Examiner.com has a great article about the day's events, including Tweet for Trees, a WED campaign running on Twitter.

You can find all the information on the Examiner's homepage.

New writing career as the Pittsburgh Elder Care Examiner

I have been discovering a new found love of writing since beginning my blog, Baby Boomer Davy’s Locker nearly over a year ago. I had worked for a major corporation for over 21 years in the Information Technology field and my job was eliminated on May 5, 2008. I actually welcomed this as a blessing in my life as I knew that I was doing a job that was not giving me fulfillment on any level for many years. I was satisfied that I had a good job with a good company, a salary that provided for my family for many years and great benefits. I had been thinking for the past few years of starting some type of small business and looked into a few franchises, of which I discovered so many of them asking for start up fees on the scale of well known brand companies, but didn’t carry the weight of a well known brand name. With all of this in the back of my mind, when I knew that my job would be eliminated, I decided that this was a life event message telling me, this was my time.

During the last year or so, as I continued to develop and learn about blogging and how to improve my writing skills, I found that I loved creative and journalistic writing. I began to write as a guest blogger for a few other blogs and eventually discovered Examiner.com. Examiner.com is not the on-line version of The Examiner print newspaper of San Francisco, but is owned by the same parent company, AEG (link following). Examiner.com is a news site based in Denver, Colorado that allows local citizen journalists to share their city-based knowledge on a blog-like platform, in over 60 cities in the United States. The site owned by Clarity Media Group, with the primary investor being billionaire Philip Anschutz, owner of the Anschutz Entertainment Group (AEG), Regal Cinemas, and other media and entertainment companies.

Although Examiner.com is not solely based on articles written by professional journalists, there are many well known journalists writing for it. To keep it’s more professional style, Examiners need to follow more strict guidelines than they would on their own personal blogs. This has given me some great experience in furthering my writing skills as well as visibility as I gain readers, not only in Pittsburgh, but in other cites as well.

I use Twitter to gain readers and let my followers know when I’ve posted new articles as well as Facebook to ask my friends to become readers.



You can follow my articles on Examiner.com by clicking on the Examiner icon on this site or go to my Pittsburgh Elder Care Examiner homepage.

You can also become a writer for Examiner.com by going to their application page and search for open positions. If you do so, please mention that I told you about applying. If you are passionate about a subject in Pittsburgh or another city on Examiner.com and love writing, give applying a try. They request that Examiners post at least two articles per week but obviously, as you get paid per viewers and reader clicks, you will want to post much more than that if you want to earn income. To me, this is a learning and building job. I am learning more and more about writing, as well as my subject in Pittsburgh Elder Care and I am building visibility as a writer and gaining readers, which can only help me in whatever writing jobs I have in the future. I hope to continue to build readership and some additional income by doing something I love and in the process, provide some helpful information to others going through caring for their elderly parents and grandparents. I had to do a lot of research to find resources when my mother started showing symptoms of Alzheimer’s Disease. I hope to make it easier for others only starting out with issues of elder care by supplying links to many resources on my homepage.