There's no place like a sinking ship to re-evaluate your career as a pirate.

January has been a shitty month. It started out with a friend being killed in a car accident (age 27, hit by a drunk driver on Christmas Eve), and didn't improve. Andrea has been living with her family in Flint for the past two months. Long distance relationships work for some people, but between the physical separation and the unresolved stress from five months of touring, ours has been tense and miserable. I'm not ready to go into details, but I've seriously questioned whether I want to spend another five months on the road, and beyond that, if Andrea and I have what it takes to work together as a team at all.

It's a new month though, and time for a re-evaluation of plans, goals, and my view of life in general. The transition from one mode of life to another has never been hard for me, but I always catch myself swept up in things and carried away with day-to-day affairs before I've actually come to terms with the fact there's been a change. I've been working for the last two months with blinders on, saving money, sleeping early, and losing contact with everyone. I've been living entirely for the future, for the goal of getting back on tour, but completely ignoring actual life around me. BAD IDEA! When it became obvious that things between Andrea and I were not working out, my priorities changed. I've been in better contact with friends, who are solidly supportive and loyal, and I'm cutting myself more slack in the leisure department. If there's nothing about your life that you can brag about, and you're living for something that's not making you happy, things have gotta change. Taking care of the people who care about you is worth whatever time and money it costs, because you never know when you're gonna be crying in your beer.

I'm not going to keep you in suspense... The tour is still on. Andrea and I are spending more time on the phone, talking things out, and she's moving back to Chicago in a week. We're planning to leave for Austin, Texas at the end of February. I'll post pictures of the going-away party.