I Get Restless

 This won't be a long post, because it's 10:23 and I'm very tired already, and I desperately want to brush my teeth, which isn't usually something I feel so strongly. Or who knows, maybe it will be long.  Anything goes at 10:23. I looked at mine and LotN's old messages tonight.  The ones he told me I should if I wanted to understand, but that I couldn't bring myself to at the time. It was an interesting experience.  I was able to relive those feelings, but at a distance, under the tempering of a little time.  It started not too unpleasantly.  My main goal was to understand more fully what I had done wrong.  The answer was more complicated than I was expecting. I hadn't done much wrong at first.  In fact, I initially found myself more frustrated with myself for how hard I was on myself than anything else.  Then things started to shift. I couldn't put my finger on how, but I felt the transition from vulnerable to uncomfortable in how I spoke....

 It's too early to know. It's almost over, I'm almost home, and I still don't know how it ends.   What's changed?  How am I different? Things have been different the last two weeks, but that's nothing if it doesn't have a lasting impact.   Right now I don't know.  I just trust and pray. It's the last night.  Here goes.

  Era: road trip I wrote this yesterday in the bed of my truck.  I've been trying and trying to turn the little song fragments in my head into a whole work, and this was the first time I succeeded so far.   It's certainly not perfect.  It tries to say a lot, and I think that diminishes anything it doesn't say.  As with all my songs, the goal is to capture a feeling, a moment, or a perspective as truly as I can, but there are more sides to everything. The process of moving on is not an easy one, and not one that I want to take lightly.  I've had to be intentional in not allowing any bitterness to grow, in trying to be as accurate as possible in my recollections of the past, and to look at myself and my future in a way that's God-honoring and not melodramatic.  I knew that no matter what I did, I didn't want to move on improperly.  The wound needed to be cleaned and stitched in a straight line, not simply have a bandage slapped on it so I didn'...

  Era: post-LotN Of all the songs I'm posting tonight, this is the most imperfect.  It's overly long, has no chorus to speak of, and contradicts its own structure at least once.  But it also might be the most perfect representation of my feelings immediately following the breakup, and best sums up the story from beginning to end. I actually wrote the song the day after we broke up, not the day of like it says; still too soon for me to have developed the regret that showed itself in Why I Let Him Go, only a deep sadness and feeling of loss. Things turned quickly, and in One Month I tried to put into words all the things that were lost overnight.  I failed, unfortunately.   More was lost than I can explain in two and a half minutes.

  Era: post-LotN I wrote this song about a week after we broke up, and the only line that isn't true is in the second verse.  The chorus is one side of a multifaceted story, but largely accurate. If I had more time, I would probably rewrite the second verse a little bit, but I do really like the bridge.

  Era: pre-LotN Look, it's not the pain that keeps on drawing me away from what I love. There's things haunting all of us Whether from below or from above. I recorded those lines late one night, weeks before I ever thought of LotN as a possibility.  Shortly (very shortly) after he and I started talking, I sat down one day and turned it into what you hear up there.  Wolves is the only song I'm posting tonight that isn't strictly auto-biographical.  While some of the lines certainly describe how I've felt from time to time, the whole song describes someone much less inclined to settle down than I am.

  Era: post-Ferdinand Hypocrite was written at a time when I was still disgusted with myself, and I think that comes across pretty well.  More than that though, I was done.  I didn't trust myself with relationships anymore, so I had basically decided that I never needed to be in one again.  I changed my stance after I had some time to recover, which is funny considering what later happened with LotN. The relationships had very different outcomes, however.  LotN left me feeling imperfect, but capable of improvement and, eventually, a solid, happy relationship.  And I'd say that's a solid step forward. And yes, I realize that I have a hair hanging off of my pants in the video.  I didn't watch it until I had left the park.

 So, remember how I said there should be some different content on today if all goes according to plan?  Things did not go according to plan.   Therefore, that's postponed until tomorrow, and will look different than even I thought. Second thing is, I listed some songs yesterday, but left out one of the most important ones.   Running Just in Case - Miranda Lambert This was initially a post-Ferdinand era song, and defined that time in my life best.  Of all songs I've ever heard, this one best described how I felt then, in everything from the lyrics to the melody to the production.  Obviously, it doesn't have to be literal to sum up how I'm feeling (no one has a tattoo of my name, for example). There's a wandering there, a weariness, and the kind of strength that you don't realize you had until you've exhausted every other strength, and then you get to one that seems bottomless.   But listen to it, and see if you don't agree that there's a...

With how much time I've been spending in the car lately, you can guess that I've been listening to a lot of music.  Right now, though, I'm not going to talking so much about what I've been listening to overall, but instead bringing a few specific songs to your attention.  They're songs that deserve it.   For fun, I'll tie each of them to how I'm feeling currently. Time - Hans Zimmer Time is from the movie Inception, and it's beautiful.  I said in the song tag that Head Case is my favorite song, but in a different way, Time is.  There's sadness in it, but mostly resolution.  Loss behind, but a moving forward anyway.  I don't know what that will look like for me, but I know that's where I'm going. There's a version here that always makes me cry T raveling Alone - Jason Isbell When I left, I had a lot of people ask me if I would get lonely.  And very confidently, I said no.  I get lonely with other people, I don't get lonely by myse...

 So it's been awhile. The last three days have been busy.  I said there would be a picture update, so this is that, with some verbage thrown in there for good measure.  These last few days have been packed; the next few will have a lot more writing from me.  Probably multiple posts a day if I had to guess. Thursday started off with that dirty windshield finally getting cleaned.  That's Astrid there. LSU has a beautiful campus (from what I saw). Coming into Dallas. Downton in Denton, TX This is where my story begins.  Saturday morning I woke up bright and early, forced myself to go back to sleep, and ended up rising around 10:30.  At which point, I hopped in the car, and tried to figure out where to go. A buddy had suggested Fort Worth, so that is where I went.  I paid $10 to park in a nearly empty lot and walked past Billy Bob's Texas ("The World's Largest Honky Tonk") to the stockyards. The speedway I passed on my way to Fort Worth It took me abo...

  I'll post a photo update later, but for now it's just words. I thought that as I talked less, due to being around no one for most of the time recently, when I finally had the chance, I would want to talk more.  And as anyone who's known me for a long time can testify, the thought of me talking more  is a scary one.   But I called my family today, and found myself actually wanting to talk less.  It was almost like I had forgotten how to find things that I thought were worth telling.  I would finish a story, or answer a question, and have no idea what to say afterwards. Now granted, there are probably two side factors that contribute to this.  First, I'm tired.  From Monday to Thursday, I was in the car for over thirty-five hours, and sitting is more exhausting than you might think.  I've also been waking up at eight no matter what time I go to sleep, which has only been before midnight one night this week.  So add those two togethe...

  So this morning I left my lovely host family in Olive Branch, Mississippi, who we'll call the Gourds, and headed for Louisiana.   As a side note, I thoroughly enjoyed my time with the Gourds.  I knew as soon as I saw the .9 mm magazine on the counter that I was with kindred spirits, which was confirmed by my easily conversing with Mrs. Gourd and Brother Gourd for forty minutes that evening.  The food was good, the company was warm, and my heart was happy.   I spent about three hours on the highways today before changing my GPS settings so it would only take me on the backroads.  The backroads turned out to be very nice at first, and then a little sad.  Highway 61 in MS is known as the Blues Highway, and I did have the blues much of the time.     Look very closely and you'll see a train in the distance. Then I hit Louisiana, where I was welcomed by a small sign telling me where I was, and then almost immediately, a much larger...

Historic Bulloch Hall in Roswell, GA, where Teddy Roosevelt's parents were married.  Also happens to be where my great-great-aunt was born and grew up. One of the Georgia Marble Company plants in Tate, GA.  The asphalt roads leading out of the plant are white from the marble dust, and in some places I could see it billowing up from the plant. That black speck near the middle of the picture is a drone. I don't know how my windshield got so dirty.  It's embarrassing.