I am saying goodbye to New York today. This city has been a lousy lover for the past week, too cold, too loud, too all over me like a wet blanket, but I'll forgive it, I'll chalk it up to the changing climates, the half in winter/ half in spring temperment. I am looking for some sun and some warmth and some salt. I am looking to Perth. In about an hour a car is coming to pick Aaron, Mark and I up for the first leg of our journey down under. We are being picked up, driven to Newark. New Jersey and then sitting on the longest commercial airline flight available: Newark to Singapore non-stop. Eighteen and a half hours. I can sleep an entire night's sleep and wake up with ten hours left to kill. I hope that our tickets come with some kind of anti-psychotic medication or some serious sedatives as I really am not sure how I am going to cope with sitting in a small, uncomfortable seat for that length of time. I am sure it will all be fine in the end but until then it is fun to be overly dramatic about such a long flight.

I have been feeling guilty about taking this trip as I do so much traveling with the band and I kind of feel like when we aren't on tour, I don't deserve to travel. But my mom pointed out that I have not been on a true vacation in a long while and that it will be nice to travel without having to work at the same time and you know what, she is totally right. Sometimes you have to force yourself to settle down and relax, force yourself to be carefree and not feel guilty about it. So that is what i am doing. Slowing down and forcing myself to put my feet up and find my center. Friends have been asking me, "What are you guys going to DO on your trip?" and I have honestly been answering, "Nothing." So i hope that is exactly what happens, a lot of nothing with Australia as a backdrop.

This is an odd thing, this blogging. I am not sure how to do it, how mych of myself I should put out there for consumption, I feel like there has to be a level of ego involved in this, some kind of belief that my life is somehow inherently interesting and that people need to read about what I have been doing and thinking and feeling. But i don't feel like my life is really that interesting at all and I am sitting here trying to imagine what someone would be thinking while reading these posts. I guess I just need to get comfortable with this medium, and learn HOW to do it and forget the WHY of it. So forgive me out there whoever you are, forgive me for the time being and allow me to figure this all out and learn to make it interesting. or funny. or sad. Give me some time to figure out how to make this real.

I will end this with a shared story... My friend Ben and I have a long running joke/list we call "Inappropriate places to remove your shirt." And the riff is quite simple really, we just imagine situations where it would be completely odd and inappropriate to simply, and without explantion or some kind of declaration, take off one's shirt. For instance: Standing in line at a fast food restaurant. The one that gets us all the time is: While sitting on an airplane. We laugh so hard at the idea of just taking off your shirt while on a flight. And what the folks around you would think and how they would react. So as I am about to emabrk on a long, maddening flight to the other side of the globe, I am sure at some point the very real and very palatable thought of taking off my shirt will set in. And maybe this time, I'll just go for it and see what happens.