Christmas Is Wherever You Are

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-0d4nfpUX7w]

In the fall of 2009, my band 7k toured the United States. We left mid-September and didn’t return until Thanksgiving. During those eight weeks, my experience of myself and my life changed. I watched the sun rise over a corn field in Northern Ohio, saw the leaves change in Central Pennsylvania, and performed for thousands of people in all four time zones. It was one of the most enjoyable and transformational experiences of my adult life and, in the end, it made me clear that life on the road wasn’t for me.

I could spend this whole blog entry getting all complicated and heavy about the reasons; there are many, and they’re all very good. But in the end, I stopped touring because I discovered that you can’t run from dissatisfaction or sadness. They live inside the human spirit and corrode from within. The only antidote is love – and I had that waiting at home. For me, the answer was recreating myself so I could spend more time there.

When I got home in November, my life was a shambles. My wife was sick, my finances were a wreck, and my employment status was dangling by a thread. I wrote this song about Christmas, but really it’s about home. It’s about all the things that make us who we are, and how we don’t have to travel a single mile to have it all.

All the love you need already surrounds you. I hope you find it this Christmas.

Love,

Jeff