What it means

I've been thinking quite a bit lately.  About my life, who I am, what I want to do.  It's interesting to take an outsider's approach to examining yourself; look at yourself as if you're someone else.  I find myself trying to figure out what I'm about this way, trying to discover all the little intricacies about me...  There's a lot.  I'm so in love with my music that it envelopes everything in my life.  In fact as I'm sitting here typing this, I find myself unable to think right unless I've got iTunes playing my favourites: Saosin, Scary Kids Scaring Kids, Circa Survive, Silverstein, Alexisonfire, In:Aviate, The Sound of Animals Fighting...  I can't get a smooth thought without music playing...  Without complex guitar riffs and progressions, creative, non-rudimentary drum patterns, someone I've never met (exception: Dallas Green.  I had a full conversation with him just before AOF's set at Warped Tour) yet I feel like I know them better than myself.  Someone inadvertently putting my very thoughts into words that I can't.  I want to be part of that.  I know I'm not the only person who does this and feels this way.

I want to be that person that people listen to playing and get inspired to do what they love.  I want to be that guy who's constantly on the road, with no bed, making just enough money to pay for gas to the next stop.  I want to smell terrible and have a good excuse.  I want to sit around at gas stations writing new songs cause that's the only free time I have.  I want to be the guy that people see onstage and think, "that sounds just like the recording...  How does that even work?" or, "How do you even think to write something like that?"  I want people to question my ability and feel the need to see it to believe it.  I want to see cities.  I want to meet people, even if I forget their name the very second they tell me.  I want to do things that other musicians don't do, I want to break the stereotype of a stuck-up, jaded jerk that happens to write music people like.  I want to be setting up for a show, and hear someone yell my name.  Then immediately go shake their hand.

It's so hard to put into words what this means to me...  It's more than making music I like.  It's a passion.  It's writing something that other people like.  It's creating something and sharing that creation with other people and having it accepted.

If music was a girl, I'd have married her on my 18th birthday, cause I know without any doubt that's what I want in my life always.

Thinking about what this could become...  It makes every bad thing in my life disappear, if only for a moment.  It makes my life seem like the best life anyone could have, because it's heading in that direction.  It makes me smile.  How can something that makes me feel so good and is healthy for me, be the wrong choice?

In my mind, it can't.