So take me home, take me back to where I belong

You ever feel like you're at the end of an era of your life? I feel like I'm about there right now. It's hard to explain, and the only other time I've felt it was at the end of my mission. I remember there was a moment about 2 weeks before I went home that something in my brain clicked and I realized that I had accomplished whatever it was that I was out there to do and I just needed to finish. It was a good feeling, but a little strange because it marked the end, the successful completion of something I wasn't entirely sure I would be able to do. I think it was the first time I ever really completed something and completed it well (despite what rumors apparently were circulating about me and my oh-so-terrible ways [Elder McCarrey did, in fact, have a CD with non EFY or Mo-Tab songs on it, and you know, he honest to goodness felt the spirit when listening to those songs. Deal with it.]). I went home knowing that I had accomplished what I needed to. It felt great.

Before I moved out of my last apartment, I knew I was moving long before I accepted it. I fought that feeling long and hard though because I didn't want to leave my comfort zone. I loved that ward and the people in it and all that, but it was really time to move, and for more reasons than just one. I knew though that it was entirely my choice and that my life was mine to control. When I finally decided to leave, I knew it was the right choice and I haven't regretted it for one single second. But the uncertainty was definitely there until the very last moment.

I am pretty sure that I'm in a combination of those two places. My time is up, but I really don't want it to be. There are a lot of things that look really good on paper that give me reasons to stay, but they are slowly fading into the oncoming sunrise. (I say sunrise because I have felt more lost and alone in Provo than I ever have at any other point in my entire life, Dixie and Mission included). I have so many close friends and I'm scared to death of starting again, but I almost feel like I need to for the sun to turn back on. It's been so long since I've felt truly comfortable in my skin where I live and I miss that feeling, but I know my way around this darkened room. I don't need to see to know that my bed is 4 steps away, that when I swing my leg around to lay on the mattress I need to lift my leg a little higher so I don't hit my guitar. The metaphor for my life fits neatly in my head and I'm not sure if I want to keep moving around trying to find the Taylor-sized cutout that exists somewhere out there. This city that has been so much to me but never comfortable is at least bearable in its eccentricities.

Things that I fear leaving are slowly leaving me, for one reason or another. Music projects fade into the night and I am forced to abandon them in the place I long ago prepared just in case. Everson rests there now, a product of life. Letting go of that band is a hard thing for me to do in a way I doubt anyone else in the band gets. I don't know that they need to, really. I feel like I was the head of that ship. I certainly wasn't the only creative force in that band, but I was the one who forced it to keep moving. Everyone else showed up, accepting Everson as a band of convenience. I told them when practice was and asked them to chose option 1 or 2. I was the first to show up at shows, I was the one who booked them all with 3 notable exceptions. I pushed practices in the direction that forced everyone to grow, and I didn't accept anything less than the best of everyone else in terms of playing. They all delivered, of course. Every single person who was ever in that band let me push them into something better than what they were when they joined. At some point though, they got tired of pushing. I didn't stop trying to push, of course, but after a while, you can only push something no one else is pushing for so long. We all sacrificed for that band. We paid our dollars for gas, for gear, sacrificed hundreds of hours in practicing and playing shows, but I put everything I had into that band multiple times over. I feel kind of abandoned in a way, and I hope with all of my heart that my band mates that read this know me well enough to know what I'm really trying to say. Everson, out of dust and wood you were hewn, and unto dust you return, covered in our blood and dreams. May you rest comfortably in our memories.

This era for me is fast closing, and I don't like change forced on me, particularly when it comes with the realization that my goals and desires for this era were completely and totally unmet. Yet move I will because move I must. I just need to keep putting the one foot in front of the other until I know what direction I'm supposed to have been moving.