Objectively, my life is pretty good. I have a stable career, a comfortable home, feisty cats, wonderful people, and more opportunities than many ever get. But that doesn’t make anxiety disappear.

Sometimes it feels like life is an endless cycle of striving, reinventing yourself, and then doing it all over again. You can make all the right moves and still lose. No amount of planning or preparation ever feels like enough, and all you can do is stay one step ahead of ruin while building a future worth living in. I keep waiting to reach cruising altitude, but it never quite arrives.

Writing songs helps me process things that don’t always make sense rationally. As for whether the next life will suck too, hopefully we’ll never find out.