Page 81 of Between the Lines

He took a deep breath. “Yes. There was. And for the sake of my client and because of privacy laws, I can only talk about it in the most general terms but suffice it to say that I did what I thought was in her best interests. For that, I was almost disbarred. I chose to retire and save my firm the embarrassment, but I know in my heart it was the right thing to do. I sleep just fine at night, and that’s more important than any job, I promise you that.”

“It sounds…heroic,” Cece replied.

“I’m no hero. I’m just a human being who found the courage to do the right thing. We should all conduct ourselves that way.”

“No argument from me.”

“I loved parts of my job,” he continued. “Helping people. Solving problems. But once I retired, music called to me. I’d always fooled around on the guitar a bit. Once I had the time to take it seriously, I thought, why not? It helped heal me, in a lot of ways.”

“So music was the antidote, or maybe the thing you’d been missing?” Cece said.

“I think what I was missing was making something,” he corrected gently. “After years of destroying marriages, being able to create was…” He smiled. “Life-changing. In some ways, music and songwriting saved my life.”

She made a note on her pad about that because it touched her. “You play at Shooters, a small local bar, once a month now,” she said. “That’s not exactly Madison Square Garden.”

Joe laughed. “No. But it’s real and people show up. They listen. They clap. Sometimes they sing along. I don’t need more than that.”

“It’s still pretty impressive,” Cece said. “Especially when you consider how many people never let themselves even try.”

She glanced at the clock, then back at him. Plenty of time. She could afford to go deeper.

“Was there a moment when you almost didn’t do this?” she asked. “When you thought, ‘This is ridiculous. I should stick to what I know.’”

Joe didn’t answer right away. He looked down, considering.

“Yes,” he said finally. “More than once. Mostly when I thought about what people would think. Or when I worried I’d fail publicly. People have a lot of pride about that sort of thing, but men especially. Some of my colleagues thought I was nuts.”

“What changed?”

“I decided that not trying felt worse than failing,” he said. “At least failure means you made an attempt. I didn’t want to live the rest of my life thinking what if?”

Cece felt that hit deep in her soul. She kept her face neutral and her voice steady. “You didn’t just start playing again,” she said. “You write. You record. You really committed to the whole process. That takes more than just a desire.”

“It does,” he said. “It takes discipline. And humility. I’m not twenty-five anymore. I don’t bounce back the same way.” He looked at his hands. “Took a while to build these callouses from the strings. But at this age, I know who I am. I’m more patient with how long things take. I understand good takes time and it rarely, if ever, turns into perfect. And I’m okay with that.”

She smiled slightly. “That’s not something people talk about enough. The trade-offs. Being able to get to a place where your own personal satisfaction is enough.”

“No,” Joe said. “Everyone wants to focus on the grind. Or they talk about what you might lose. They don’t talk about what you gain. About the joy. The happiness.”

Cece gave that moment a second, then shifted gears. “You also helped me with this podcast,” she said. “You wrote the theme music. Why say yes to that?”

Joe glanced at her, his smile barely contained. “Because you needed some and I wanted to help. Because I believe in what you’re doing. And maybe I wanted to see if I could. I do love a challenge.”

“You nailed it,” she said with a touch of pride. “And I appreciate that you wanted to support this podcast.”

His smile blossomed. “What you’re doing is important. You’re giving people space to talk about who they are now. People of a certain age. The kind of people that are often dismissed as no longer interesting or important.”

She felt a flicker of emotion and tamped it down, the way she always did. This wasn’t about her.

“So if someone listening is sixty, or seventy, or just tired of where they are in life,” Cece said. “And they’re thinking about doing something they put off for years—what would you tell them?”

Joe didn’t hesitate. “Start small. It might be scary, but so what? We’ve lived this long, right? Just start. Waiting for confidence is a mistake. Confidence comes after.”

Cece nodded, already knowing that line would stay in the edit. It was so good and so true.

She glanced at her notes, then back at him. “That feels like a good place to pause,” she said. “When we come back, I want to talk about what it’s like to be seen differently when you change course. Especially by people who knew you before.”

Joe took a breath and exhaled. “That is a very real thing.”