“The partying was just something to do to kill the time between gigs.”

Slash, featuring Myles Kennedy and the Conspirators, was on Audience Channel tonight. Pretty amazing stuff, and just what I needed on this fine Friday night.

A lot of territory was covered. The Guns days, the lost decade colored by addiction, getting clean, being a solo artist and finding great musicians to jam with. Seems like often times simply jamming can turn into a band, and I’m pretty confident that’s one of the best parts about playing music. It’s certainly one of mine.

One of the questions Nic Harcourt asked was whether partying was a big draw for Slash. He responded by saying that the real draw was just playing music — and that partying was just for all other times in between practicing, playing, jamming and gigging.

It made me start thinking about all the things on my to-do list and how I get sidetracked by things that are fun, but that weren’t part of the original goal. They’re a good time and others may like their look on the outside, but it wasn’t part of what the deal should’ve been.

At the end of the day, we all have a limited amount of time here. Some of us have longer than others, but we rarely do we know what our timeline looks like. We can kill part of our time with diversions, or we can take meaningful breaks to recharge. For me, there’s a big difference between the two.

Tonight I am thankful for the wake-up call that helped me remember to not be so quick to pardon my wasted time. It gave me a swift kick in the butt to get back to focusing on checking off things on my list so that I can stop killing time and instead define it by my version of true living.

Here’s to productivity.