I´m not surprised about the phone bill, one of my older sisters ran up a $3200 phone bill (land line) when she was 16, so you can imagine what that is adjusted for inflation. (this was 11 yrs. ago)

As for the dream, I am living it. I sell a around a thousand CD´s a year, make some extra cash, and do what I love, play music in front of an audience. BTW, my largest audience was around 4000, not quite MSG, but exhilirating nonetheless. On top of that, I get to climb trees. Believe it or not, I like to trim trees, it´s an underappreciated form of surgery. It takes as much skill as plastic surgery at least, plus, I´m outdoors and I work hard enough to negate the necessity of going to the gym.