I heard an especially inspiring story from the frequently inspiring podcast The Sound of Young America the other day, and I thought it was worth sharing.
It’s from an interview with “internet troubadour” Jonathan Coulton, an ex–software engineer who decided to quit his job and become a full–time musician.
Jesse Thorn: You [quit your job] just as your wife was pregnant with your first baby. Wasn’t it?
Coulton: Well, it was after she was born… well, actually, we probably had the conversation when she was still pregnant. But, yeah, that was a big part of the impetus as well, because it was sort of a wake–up call in terms of my own mortality. I don’t know if other people feel that way, but that was one of the things I felt the most keenly. It was like, oh, wow, I get it, now I’m a dad, my dad just became a grandfather, and my grandfather is dead. So, I see where this is going, you know? (laughs) And on top of it, I felt a new pressure to be a good role model. I started looking at myself through my daughter’s eyes. What would I see if I were my daughter?
The answer is that I would see a guy who had aspirations, and who maybe had some talent, and just never took the chance, and instead got bogged down and stuck behind the safety and comfort of a job that was not really what he wanted to do. I didn’t want to look like that to her, and I wanted her to have the ability to make the brave choice. And in order to do that, I needed to make the brave choice.
You can listen to the whole interview and a bunch of his songs at the TSOYA website. In a few months, I’ll be seeing Coulton perform in front of potentially 50,000+ people at the Penny Arcade Expo, so he seems to be doing pretty well for himself now.
His story reminded me of the heart-rending “Things I’m Going to Do” page in the scrapbook from Up. This is a man who is bravely filling in the remaining pages of his life’s scrapbook exactly how he wants to.


