"Have Left"

I wrote this song and recorded it about nine years ago, when I was living in New York City and decided to move to Connecticut to join The World is a Beautiful Place & I am no Longer Afraid to Die. It wasn't so much a rash decision as it was something I felt innately required to do, by virtue of having grown up wanting so badly to be a musician for a living. In 2009, my friend Tyler and I visited Brooklyn as young men in our 20s and told each other, "Two years from now, we will move here, and we will have the most fun we've ever had in our lives every day and every night until we become famous people with lots of money." I spent two years from that point working mediocre jobs in Morgantown, WV and saving up $2,000. I thought $2,000 would be enough to get a footing in the city. It lasted long enough for me to forge paystubs to get an apartment and work at a bakery I couldn't afford to shop at. Eventually, I was lucky enough to land a well-paying job doing the same thing I had been doing in West Virginia, but for much wealthier people who paid me a lot more money.

After living like a big city hipster for almost a year from that point in an apartment located between the hospital with the worst Yelp reviews I've ever seen ("They killed my aunt!") and the housing complex where Jay-Z grew up (A three foot long rat was captured there soon after I moved to the neighborhood), I was offered by an old friend to come join a band that will tour and has a lot of people in it and come live in a house with even more people in it. "There's no closet, because one of your roommates is growing weed in the closet." "Yes, I accept," I said. I have no regrets about this choice, just this song that would have been track one on a solo album I rewrote and scrapped, rewrote and scrapped endlessly until I decided to move on from the part of my life that included being sad about trying to date people and to the part of my life that includes writing songs about being sad about money and work.

Since there are five Mondays in January, and my plans are tied to this idea of a-new-song-every-week while giving half only to the Big Fans, I will be giving this song away for free to anyone, even people who have not subscribed to my Patreon. Regular posting will resume next week and every week from here on out. I love you, and thanks for listening. Think about joining. Think about telling your friends about this page.

Lyrics:

If I wasn't leaving, I'd be more nervous,
because I've only got a few days on my lease.
I'll say the things that pass into my mind,
unlike the other days when we hung out.
I couldn't even pick a place to go.
I'll head up one more block and make a left,
find a place to buy a beer and think about
the things to do once I have left.