Over the course of the summer, I've come to realize that marching band was a massive waste of my life.

With nothing to keep me busy but a job that gets done before 1:00 almost every day, I've been doing some pretty fun stuff. Obviously, I've been practicing a lot. I also picked up tennis and have drastically improved (though I'm still not very good). Even in just this past week, I've taken my bike to a skatepark for the first time and in just 2 days I learned to do a 180 air out of a quarter pipe.

If I could put all the time I spent on marching band into these sort of personal interests, I'd pretty much kick ass at life. Marching band was such a massive amount of work over four seasons, and in the end, all it produced was 40 minutes worth of drill and music. I mean, if I could put all that work towards something like trombone practice or tennis or BMX or anything, I could have gotten so much better, but all I did with that work was put it towards a marching band show. Who cares. The only people that care about the show are the marching band, the directors and the parents. My parents would probably have preferred that I play a sport, to be honest, although they're impressed by everything I do anyway just because that's what parents tend to do. Bottom line: The ridiculous magnitude of my poor time investment decision is now hitting me full force and in the future I have to avoid wasting my time in such a manner.

I have a strange urge to buy a bass guitar and start learning it.