not much

sometimes the smallest answer is carrying the biggest story

There’s a particular kind of question we ask without really asking.

“What have you been up to?”

It happens in hallways. Over coffee. At the beginning of a meeting. When you run into someone you haven’t seen in a while.

And most of the time, nobody is expecting the complete answer.

Lately, I’ve realized I don’t even know how to give one, because the complete answer would take a while.

I’ve been healing from one of the hardest periods of my life. I’ve been recovering from burnout while trying to understand how much of the person I had become was built around simply getting through things. I’ve been learning what life looks like when survival is no longer the only item on the agenda.

I’ve been grieving.

I’ve been changing.

I’ve been making peace with versions of myself I once judged for not knowing then what I know now.

I’ve been trying optimism back on. And, somewhat unexpectedly, discovering that it still fits.

So when somebody casually asks what I’ve been up to, explaining all of that seems a little excessive, so I usually just say:

“Not much.”

And somewhere in that contradiction, a song appeared.

the joke is also the truth

What I love most about not much is that the title works in two completely different directions at once.

Of course it’s ridiculous.

The narrator is getting his joy back. His voice back. His whole damn life back.

That is very definitely something.

But there’s another truth underneath the joke.

A surprising amount of rebuilding a life doesn’t look particularly dramatic from the outside.

Sometimes it looks like sleeping.

Sometimes it looks like laughing without immediately wondering whether you’re being too loud.

Sometimes it’s saying no without writing a closing argument explaining why you’re allowed to.

Sometimes it’s saying yes because you actually want to.

Sometimes it’s letting something good happen without immediately searching for the price you’ll eventually have to pay for it.

And sometimes it’s realizing that you are beginning to like the person occupying your life.

None of those moments would make particularly exciting headlines.

Together, they can change everything.

surviving wasn’t enough

There’s a line at the center of this song that probably explains why I needed to write it:

“Learning maybe surviving wasn’t enough.”

For a long time, survival can feel like an accomplishment.

Sometimes it absolutely is.

You get through the day. Then another. You solve the next problem. You carry what needs carrying. You become remarkably good at functioning under circumstances you probably never should have had to become good at functioning under.

And eventually you can become so skilled at surviving that you forget survival was supposed to be temporary.

That realization has been following me for a while.

I don’t want to merely survive my life.

I want to live inside it.

I want joy that doesn’t need to justify itself.

I want connection.

I want ridiculous laughter.

I want mornings I’m happy to wake up inside.

I want to dance badly for no damn reason.

I want to be surprised.

I want to trust good things enough to experience them while they’re happening instead of standing nearly waiting to see how they end.

Maybe most importantly, I want to continue becoming someone I haven’t met yet.

so why does it sound so happy?

That was important, as this song could easily have been a ballad.

It isn’t.

The story behind not much contains grief, exhaustion, endings and recovery, but I didn’t want the music to keep living there, because I’m not living entirely there anymore either.

The production needed movement. It needed humor. It needed that slightly absurd confidence of someone casually shrugging while an entire parade is happening behind him.

The verses tell you what’s really going on. The chorus keeps answering:

Not much.

Getting my joy back.

Not much.

Getting my voice back.

Not much.

Getting my whole damn life back.

There is something wonderfully irreverent about that to me.

After writing songs about trying to understand what happened, what was lost, what remained and what all of it meant, there is something almost rebellious about making this one fun.

Not because the difficult things weren’t real.

Because they were.

But they don’t get to own every song that comes afterwards.

meeting someone else

One of my favorite lines in the song is also one of the simplest:

“I’ve been meeting someone else / turns out, he’s me.”

That may be the part of the chapter I didn’t anticipate.

I thought rebuilding would mean recovering some earlier version of myself.

Going back.

Finding the person who existed before everything became complicated.

I’m increasingly convinced that person isn’t waiting for me.

And I don’t think I want him to be.

The person emerging now knows things that earlier versions of me couldn’t have known. He has lost things. He has survived things. He has made mistakes. He has changed his mind. He has learned where some of his instincts came from and started deciding which ones he still needs.

He is a work in progress.

But I like him.

Actually, I kind of like him this much.

And after everything, that feels enormous.

what have i been up to?

So maybe the answer hasn’t changed.

If you see me somewhere and ask what I’ve been doing lately, I probably won’t tell you all of this.

I’ll probably smile.

Maybe take a sip of whatever I’m drinking.

Shrug.

And say:

“Not much.”

But we’ll both know better.