STATE OF THAT DRUMMER GUY 2020

Hey Everybody!



In what's probably going to be my last big written segment of 2020. I wanted to finally get to The State of That Drummer Guy 2020. There's been a ton of good and bad this year. Just like how you want to take news, I'll start off with the bad.

2019 was the worst year of my life for a multitude of reasons. 2020 has been a little better, but the world decided to take a dump and die. All we can really do right now is hope that 2021 will be the beginning of a resurgence of life and we can get back on track to being able to have better lives and enjoy life for what we have. Sadly though, I'm far from that personally.

This year has been a lot of grief, inner hatred, and a lot of personal realizations that have really messed with my inner psyche. Physically, I've ballooned up in weight, I honestly don't know what I weigh right now, but I am on the wrong side of 300lbs. A huge part of this has been medications I have been trying to get to get off of at a reasonable level. At it's worst I was sleeping 21 hour days and I still felt like I didn't sleep a wink. To put it in perspective. I was on 4-5 medications at a time that all cause drowsiness. I am still battling the effects of this and I am really, really hoping in 2021, I can get off these medications (antidepressants) and be able to feel like I'm alive once again. With that, I hope to shred this excess weight and at least fit back in my t-shirts again.

Along with that, I have had a lot of personal issues that have come up that hit me so hard in the gut. Most people either have, or know people who have skeletons in their closet. In the last year and a half, I've learned I have a war memorial sized graveyard of skeletons in my family closet. It's really messed me up in a bad way and with the world we are still currently living in; I'm not sure when I'll be able to get back out.

And of course the big elephant in the room is the world in 2020. January and February I was actually doing reasonably ok and I had so many plans on what I wanted to do for 2020; all of them being crushed in back in March. I've been inside stores 6 times this year and some car drives to pick up things or just to try to get out of this small apartment of mine; other than that, I've been locked inside for 10 months now. The isolation, the loneliness, the pain, the...everything that comes with living in a pandemic is crushing me so hard. Of course add that on top[ of my mental and physical struggles, diabetes and just general life3 problems everyone faces and I am living in a lonely circle of hell.

There's not much solace to my world in 2020, everything has hit me way too hard and I've thought about ending it all on several....SEVERAL occasions. This is actually the first year in a while that I haven't actually uttered those words out loud to anyone as everyone else is struggling as well. I didn't want to tact on to anyone else's worries when we are all in hell together. I honestly feel that if I can get though the other side of this pandemic; I won't need antidepressants anymore as I will have made it through the worst the world could be in my lifetime, without the considerations of global warming, running out of oil, etc. I really hope that everyone will make it through this and be able to get back to some kind of normalcy.

As far as good news. It's been quite a successful year for That Drummer Guy as a whole. Over 3,600 likes on Facebook, lots of bands being proud they were in my Best Of 2020 lists, over 100 interviews, over 750 in total and I'm already started on interviews for 2021. A ton of great music came out this year despite everything going on, a ton of great video games if you're into that....honestly, that's about it. I'm sorry for being Denny Downer; It's just really hard to be optimistic when everything this year has happened. I hope you understand…

As far as the future. I will be continuing on. I gotta hit that 1,000 interview goal, right? It's also going to be the 10th Anniversary of That Drummer Guy on August 2nd, 2021. I'm astounded that not only have I been able to keep this up for almost 10 years at this point, but that people still care and love what I do, be it the show, the year end reviews, or the interviews. Will I do anything special for my 10th anniversary. I had a few ideas that fell through, but I'm sure I can think of something good.

As far as plans, I got two things that are running through my head constantly that I will be at least attempting to do. I don't expect much of anything to come of them; but that's how I felt about That Drummer Guy as a whole.

1.) My autobiography. I wanna cover my life from when I was born to 2019. I have a lot of it written up already, but I have so, so much more to add to it. I wanted to wait till after the holidays to get back to work on it for obvious reasons.

2.) I'm actually going to take a stab at writing a script. The idea in my head is to either cover or take inspirations from my life between 16-23 in my cover band/original band days when not only was I drumming all of that time, but I was also teaching drums at the same place my band at the time practiced; and I have more than enough stories to make this a tv series given anyone would be interested. It will be a bit of a dark comedy; kinda like music-centric version of Shameless where you can laugh at everything that's going on, or cry, depending on how you view the world. I seriously have several seasons in my head for overall ideas. Even if I just write it out and do nothing with it, I just want to see if I can write a solid pilot episode and go from there.

That's about all I got right now. I hope to anyone reading this they are making the best of the holiday season that they can and I'm really hoping you'll be able to make it through 2021 better than you did 2020. It's all we can really ask for these days.

Till next time, this is That Drummer Guy saying, See Ya!

- Josh Rundquist (That Drummer Guy)