I've walked out my front door maybe four times in this last week. I haven't been looking for a job or going to any shows. I'd been cursing myself for being an irresponsible bum, but then it occurred to me that being unemployed is only irresponsible if you can't pay your bills, so I just go back to sleep or start cleaning something. It feels so good to feel so free of the 9-to-5 that I worry it's sinful, haha.

By the way, never leaving your house saves a serious, serious, serious amount of money.

Last year when I was jobless it was by choice and I was hiding the fact that I was jobless, so it didn't feel all that great... and I kept saying to myself, "enjoy this as much as you can, because it'll never happen again." But it's happened again and it's leaving me hoping that I'm downsized every summer because this break is saving my soul. I hear all of these words and ideas in my head, a flowing of things that didn't exist a month ago. I don't feel trapped or like I'm choking. But I know eventually this sort of thing will simply not be able to happen without ruining my life and I'm so scared that when those days arrive I will literally lose it because I'm not sure if I'm strong enough to handle working year after year with no long vacations or switch-ups. (Maybe I'll get lucky enough that I won't have to worry about that, but I'm not counting on it. Music fully supporting someone doesn't happen often and I really don't think it'll ever happen for me for any considerable amount of time.)

This all said, it feels good to drop off the face of the planet. It feels like coming home, like the first days I was playing music and only working when I needed to save money for a concert. When I only cared about playing music, when I didn't care about any guys for the first time in ages... and while I didn't have any friends then, I didn't have anyone to hurt me, either. Music was my one true love and I felt full. I listened to a phone post I made to an old LiveJournal in August of 2004 and in it I cried from being so happy. I don't know how to get the entire feeling of that time back, I don't even know if it's something that is meant to be felt twice in a lifetime. Because I can tell you, it felt like I was being born. I had something to live for for the first time in my life. I had a purpose, I had a direction, and I was doing something that wasn't bad for myself, it was good for myself... things I'd never had or done before.

When I made that move, when I decided to start playing shows, that decision came with no forethought, no contemplation. There just suddenly came a day when something clicked and that was the thing to do and felt completely natural. I'm looking for that again, I'm trying to close my eyes and feel around for the next thing I need to just jump into. Some days I think I grab the answer, but I open my hand and find it empty. It feels like your lungs when you take a breath to say something, then feel your words leave your mind, the burning of that held air. I feel it on the tip of my tongue. The right puzzle piece in hand that just needs to be rotated to fit.

I know the meaning of "you can't love anyone until you love yourself." I feel that truth so strongly. I know I have to be a whole and find someone whole to have togetherness, to have what I want most of all -- unbreakable, indivisible love. And I know that I can't love myself until I hear these songs that I feel waiting for me, until they are given to me and it is shown to me how my voice and hands can borrow them from that other world so they can be in this one. They are the heat you feel when someone walks up behind you. They are that magnetic pressure when you hover a fingertip between your eyes. And I am scared of them, because I am scared of myself, because they are hard words to say, because I have no trust in myself. It is so much fear, it is so much self-doubt I can't even believe that I know how to take the first step to find and capture that music.

And the trickiest part to see is that, for me, there is no way around that. Thinking a lot can be as helpful as it is defeating, but it can't be a factor in working through all of this. Thinking isn't what makes us breathe and our hearts beat, it isn't what makes birds to fly or sing. Those things are instinctual, that is what makes them feel so right that you don't even notice how right they are. No forethought, you just do it.

So what does that mean for me now? If all of the plans I made and the thinking I'd done are erased by the unforeseen? When I tried to think up a million bridges to help me across but I suddenly decide a jump will help the other side find my feet? I don't know, I have only hopeful inklings.

My fight against myself to win myself is all about fear, the kind that paralyzes you, and relents only to allow you to search for all kinds of crutches so you're able to wander aimlessly, limping on this side of the gap. I have to give up those things that pad the sharp corners, that dull the ache, but in return dull me. I have to be brave and not look down so I can get to where I need to be. The old cliche has meaning for me -- I have to face the music. I try so hard to have faith that when I finally turn toward it, what faces me I can look in the eyes and finally love.