If I were to write a (very late) blog today, this is what it would say:

3 months of silence.
Followed by 1 week of crazy.
Beat.  Sapped.  Tired.
But happy.
Ate so much.
Ran so fast.
Didn’t really sleep.
Got something I was hoping for.
Love my friends gobs.
And gobs and gobs.
Like, hug-you-in-the-sunny-parking-lot gobs.
Gorgeous in Nashville today.
Flying to Austin tonight.
Val’s picking me up.
Hooray, Val!
Joey and Sam are getting married tomorrow.

But it’s snowing back in Colorado.
And Mom’s in the hospital.

I can’t really focus.  Social whiplash and emotional incongruity.  Reasons to cry while the sun shines down.  And I think that’s just like life.

It’s all going to be okay.  Right?  It’s all going to be okay.

“Show me a man with a tattoo,
and I’ll show you a man with an interesting past.”
-Jack London

Have I mentioned that I’m in Nashville this week?  I am.

I flew in for a wedding this past weekend (Mark and Erin MILLER - holla!), and am sticking around to work from the home office for a week before flying on to Austin for another wedding.  What can I say - three one-way tickets were cheaper than two round-trips.

I am staying in a posh condo right across the street from work, running with East Nasty a couple of times, having fantastic hair days, and getting some good, quality time with my amazing friends.  Call me dense, but I didn’t realize how much I missed Nashville until I got back.

Yesterday, I accompanied the Handy Graham to get his latest tattoo - which was my first time witnessing any such thing.  At one point, I knelt down close to ask him how much it hurt.  “Would it be like me digging my fingernails into your face?” I asked, and thought about trying it just so he could give an educated answer.  But he is tough and manly, and didn’t let on how much pain is inflicted by applying the 11-needle buzzing PEN OF FIRE to one’s achilles tendon.

Today just happens to be his birthday.  Happy birthday, Grahamer!  I hope you aren’t scabby!

And that is a birthday wish I can always stand behind.

It’s been awhile since I’ve talked about my feeeeeelings.  For those of you wishing to keep a finger on the pulse of my emotional health, this one’s for you.

I remember around this time two years ago, soon after I had moved to Nashville, feeling lonely and afraid and sad.

This move could not be more different.

Not much scares me these days.  I don’t know why this is, why this time I feel so much more stable and confident - maybe because my reasons for moving are different than what they were two years ago.  Maybe because of what I experienced in my time in Nashville.  Maybe because I’m just a little bit older.

Nashville was an amazing two years - but it was loud, and it was painful.  I will never be sorry for the time that I spent there, but to be honest, it felt like being put through a cheese grater.  A big part of me died while I was there.  I was stripped of a lot of things: dreams, expectations, confidence, even truth.

A lot of times, I forgot what I know to be true.

This past month has been quiet and understated - a welcome change from the chaos of my life for the past two years.  I miss my friends in Tennessee, and start to feel a bit left out when I think of their lives going on together and without me (because how could they possibly live without me?), but most of the time, I feel calm.  My heart feels still.

I have no idea and no expectations for what this season in life will be or bring about.  But I am seeing glimmers of revival in the parts of my heart that I thought were dead and gone.  It feels foreign, but it feels like hope.

We are down to single digits: I am moving in 9 days.

And yes, I have Christmas parties 6 of the next 9 nights.  I might run out of outfits.

That said, posting may be light until after I get to Colorado.  I don’t want to miss out on a single moment of Nashville until I have to.  The thought of leaving these friends of mine - the ones I just tried to list by name and then had to stop because it would have been too long to read – keeps me awake at night.

I want to love on these people who have loved me for two years.  I want to write them each letters and tell them exactly why I appreciate them, exactly why I am going to miss them so much my heart might dissolve.  I want to sit face to face with them, and hear their voices.  I want to hug them while I can still touch them.  I want to take pictures with them, to capture this sliver of time that is flying by much too quickly.  I want to let them know that I believe in them, that I want good things for them – that, quite simply, I adore them.

Nashville, get ready for some lovin’.

Some of my best moments have been in this town.  But also, some of my hardest.

Isn’t that the way it goes?  The joy and pain are always intermingled.  It’s impossible to separate them – the laughter and the tears – because life cannot be compartmentalized like a preschooler’s cubby wall.  There is always something difficult to deal with – and there is always something to be thankful for.

It occurred to me the other night – Nashville did not fix me.  I didn’t realize that I had the expectation that it would – not until my mom got cancer and all of a sudden I am leaving this town as big a tangled mess as I have ever been.  Nashville did not heal those wounded places deep inside me, didn’t fulfill those dreams and unidentified desires that I’ve always had, didn’t make me cooler or smarter or prettier or more at peace.

I cried to my dad a couple of nights ago, telling him that as I prepare to leave, I feel an unexpected sense of disappointment.  It surprised me.  I didn’t know I felt disappointed – but I do.  I definitely do.  Nashville didn’t fix me; in fact, in some ways, it ripped those wounds open even wider.

I’ll be honest: I am a wreck these days – a bona fide disaster.  If you don’t think so, that’s because you don’t know me – or because I’m a seriously good faker.

But the people that do know?  They make up the biggest part of why I will always and forever be grateful for my time spent in Nashville.  They have not fixed me – but they have put an arm around me.  The “fingerprints of God,” my dad called them.

We are all weak.  But it’s better to know that we are.

I struggle with the question, “What am I doing with my life?”  I always have.  And with each passing day, week, year, I am no closer to finding the answer - I am learning to just take one day at a time.

However, even though I might not know what I am doing with my LIFE, I think that I will always know when it’s time to do what’s NEXT.  And once again, I’ve reached that pivotal point.  The doors have flung wide open in an undeniable way, and I am choosing to walk through them.

I am Denver-bound.

It turns out that my mom’s cancer is more serious than originally thought - and I need and want to be there throughout her treatment (another surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation).  The worst feeling in the world was getting that dreaded phone call, and being 1200 miles away.  I cannot rest in that reality.  My mom is my “person,” and I need to be close.

I am in the incredibly fortunate position to work for a company that does not see their employees as a commodity, but as humans with real lives - leading the “powers that be” to be gracious and supportive in the midst of crises.  Emma has a small Colorado office, and is willing to let me work from Denver on an open-ended basis.  I am heading west around Christmastime.

I am not calling it “moving.”  I am leaving my stuff in storage here in Nashville, and “temporarily relocating for the indefinite future.”  I don’t know what will happen, or where this will lead - it’s impossible to know what the coming months will bring.  But I just know that it feels too early - too sudden - to close the door on my Nashlife.  That may or may not wind up being relevant.  But it’s how I feel right now.

I am hoping to rent a room in Denver, or house-hop for a bit - giving me a place to sleep during the week, and leaving me free to spend my weekends in Colorado Springs with my parents.  So if you happen to live in Denver and know of any options, please let me know - because I don’t want to live under a bridge.

Obviously, there are still details to work out.  But I do know that this is “what’s next.”  Until then, you will find me crying most days, snuggling with Julie and Mel most nights, praying for my mom, and hoping that God knows what he’s doing.

Awwww, yeah!  How’s about that – Troubled Annie, for the wind!

Listen to some of their new stuff here.  “Be Mine” is so catchy, it’s practically SARS.

I moved to Nashville because I am a songwriter.  But truth be told, at the time that I moved, I could count the number of songs I had actually written on one hand.  More “brooding” than “brilliant,” I was never one of those children who composed music at age 6.  The decision to write was just that: a decision… that I made when I was 23.

Then I moved to Nashville, the songwriting Mecca of America.  I had nothing to go on except a hunch that words and music and expression made up a very important sliver of my heart, and that I had a passion and desire to get better at piecing them together.

In the last two years, I’ve been learning a tiny bit of what it means to write.  It’s been scary – to admit to myself that I might have something worth sharing, and to open myself up to the possibility of looking like a total loser.  I have felt both in equal measure – because nothing says I’M ANNIE PARSONS! like emotional highs and lows.

But here I am – a completed EP in hand.  Words and music by… me.  Songs that, I believe, stand on their own – and brought to life by my dear friend and producer Joshua Stevens.  They’re a small offering, but they’re mine – and I can’t wait for you to hear them.

Check back on Monday to order your copy of my EP, “Wish That I Was”!

As I drove back to the JAM House last night, cruising over the wet pavement and giving no thought to the “how” of how to get home because I’ve driven the route so many times, I was thinking about the fact that it’s been over two years since I left Seattle.  It’s been almost two years that I’ve lived here in Nashville.  And it’s been a long time since I’ve been able to call any city “home.”

But for as much displacement as I’ve felt, and for as much transition as I’ve experienced, it occurred to me: Nashville used to exist in my mind as “something I am doing.”

All of a sudden, it feels more like “who I am.”

It is part of the fiber of who I am.  No matter how long I stay, no matter where I go from here, Nashville is in my veins for good.

It may not be home.  It may not be comfortable.  It may not be forever.  But it’s mine.

I left Seattle two years ago today.

Last year, I wrote a big dramatic soliloquy about my feelings.

This year, I honestly don’t know what to say.

I feel flummoxed.

But wherever you go, there you are.

Whatever that means.