Jaimee Eat World

I probably think too much.

Doesn’t Have To Be You Anymore

I analyze and inevitably over-analyze until my brain had run it’s course of circles around the thought plaguing me in the moment and then I take a little time away to clear my head before I’m ready to think some more.

I suppose it’s not a bad trait to have. Most people probably don’t allow themselves to get lost in this type of reflection often enough for their own benefit; I don’t blame them, it can be a little exhaustive. Plus, it has the unwelcome bonus of providing you with the follow-up question: Okay, now with what we know or believe, what do we do about it? And I don’t think we’re ever really ready for that part – Too much work with seemingly little reward.

But I am fascinated by the things in our lives that have a funny way of resurfacing as we go about our days even when you’ve long felt that they’d never return. They always make me wonder what I missed about them the first go-around that the universe deems necessary for further exploration; Like a weird little side quest to advance to your future.

The Surviving album arrived just in time for me to get wholly encapsulated in this type of thinking and I wonder sometimes how my life might be different if it had never arrived at all.

I didn’t exactly hate the life I was living at the time, but I also hadn’t really thought of any alternative way of living. I was just going through the motions, letting the dominoes fall and allowing myself to respond to their increasingly thunderous thuds.

The louder they got, the more I’d turn to music, books and podcasts to help provide me with some – any – guidance. I knew they wouldn’t have the answers I was looking for, but I didn’t really need the answers. I needed the questions.

There was a period of time where I was listening to the Surviving album twice a day; first on the train into work, then again on the way back. I was still a bit of a slave to my bad habits then; smoking a joint in Trinity Square park just across from the church to kill time before my train and swirling a can of beer as I walked from the station back to my house every day like clockwork.

I was mostly bored as hell of everything by then and I know that’s why those habits had such a stronghold. With the exception of the time I spent with Dakota, there was nothing really exciting me about my life or the world around me. I had nothing at all to look forward to, nothing that challenged my mind or my creative spirit. I had turned my back on myself at some point and I’m still not sure why it was so easy to do that.

Somewhere on the Go train line between King City and Union Station I started to really think about it.

And I haven’t really stopped thinking about it since.

In A Lot Of Ways You’re Still That Lost Kid

I felt like I was really behind in life through just about all of my 20’s and I’m not really sure where that came from. I think I was literally born with it, this unquenchable urge to be at some imagined destination where everything just sort of clicks into place just so and you feel content and happy with yourself and your place in the world.

I don’t think that destination really exists; It changes about as frequently as the weather in October in Toronto. Is it a heatwave? Are we expecting rain? Should I get my winter coat out from the back of the closet? In fact, it’s all three within a 6-hour time-span! Bundle up, but don’t forget to layer for every possible season so you can reduce as required.

It is both a burden and a blessing to live in a world with so much untapped potential.

The older I got the more I wondered who I was supposed to compare myself to to determine if I was or wasn’t behind and I realized I didn’t really feel like I fit in anywhere, so comparing myself to anyone else made absolutely no sense at all.

I don’t think I did this when I was younger; I seemed to be more in tune with who I was and what I wanted to do and was rarely persuaded from deviating from my own little pathway. Somewhere along the way this changed, of course, but I’d never be able to pinpoint where. They were small, subtle changes over extended periods of time before I’d realize how far I’d gotten from where I wanted to be.

Now, where was that again, anyway?

I wasn’t sure, but those funny things that always seem to resurface for me always nudged me back towards music, writing, and the connections I’d make through them. It’s where I felt most comfortable and like I was actually doing something worthwhile in my life even if it felt silly to assign something so grandiose to something as simple as recording a song.

I suppose there must be something to that.

Never Alone In Pain

It’s really challenging to set and steer towards a goal if your mind and body are struggling with just getting through every day; I recognize now that I’ve lived most of my life in constant fight or flight mode and that impacted a lot of my decision making.

It’s weird to come to the conclusion that all those decisions you thought you were making as a strong-willed independent thinker were just reactions to an unstable environment and you were never really as in control of your own thoughts as you thought you were.

Around my mid-twenties a therapist astutely pointed out that the feelings I would often describe were grief. I carry a tremendous amount of grief, even today. I’ve held so much of it for so long that I can’t ever remember a time in my life where I didn’t have it.

And while I know I wont ever be rid of it – life is designed to throw as much of it at us as we can humanely take – I do know that there are moments where I forget that it’s there.

Like when I’m 6 weeks into my compulsion to listen to Surviving twice a day at minimum.

Apparently that kind of thing is actually another type of trauma response, whether it’s music or movies or books or whatever, repeated listening (or watching or reading) can be explained as just a way we cope with traumatic experiences. I only learned about that recently, but that’s another thing I’ve been doing most of my life – a teacher even pointed it out once when I was about 12. “You can’t just re-read the same books all the time,” she said. Well boy did I ever prove her wrong.

Maybe it’s not super healthy to go back and listen and re-listen to your favourite records the way I tend to, but it’s surprising sometimes how many times you need to hear something before you’re able to use it in a way that helps steer you in a more positive direction – one where you’re not constantly wallowing in your grief or feeling stagnant and bored.

I don’t know how many times I listened to this record that winter, but it’s the reason I started writing music again and the reason I’m able to talk about my life far more openly today; It gave me the answer to the questions of, “Where did I go?” and “Where would I like to be?” and reaffirmed that I could make the changes that would lead me there.

As I said towards the beginning of this, I do sometimes wonder how my life would be different if I had never heard this record when I did and it’s kinda scary to think about it.

At best, I would still be carrying on my boring, do-nothing life that lacked purpose, excitement, love and adventure.

At worst, well, I suppose I would have continued to disintegrate into… maybe nothing at all.