I've never thought about the end of my career. I've had this growing motto in my life to live day to day - and when you live day to day, it's hard to talk years.
The end of my playing career was May 28, 2017. That, for me, was an historic day. I'll carry it with me forever. It will be hard to explain to people the feelings and emotions I felt that day.
Even though I am the daughter of a poet, and my stepmother is also a poet, growing up, I didn't think I could understand poetry; I didn't think that it had any relevance to my life, the feelings that I endured on a day-to-day basis, until I was introduced to the right poem.
That's a terrible price to pay because you loved life so much, with the intensity of a thousand suns, and the women and all of it - and then it's all taken away from you. You end up walking the hallways of always to a place called tedium and apathy, day after day after day. Years go by.
At the end of the day music is a grind. You're constantly working at it and even with playing shows as well. If your schedule isn't planned right it could really throw things off, but honestly at the end of the day its incredible being able to go to so many places.
Because I write what I feel the most heavy about. So if there is one day of the week when I feel completely crushed by existential dread, I'll end up writing about it, not the great day I had at the park with my friends. I hope it resonates with people - and it does, with some.
At the end of the day, it's my choice to do the lap. At the end of the day, it was my choice not to be nominated for the Madden medal. I had my last football responsibility as the club Best and Fairest and that's what I was looking for.
I came from a background where I was very poor growing up but I have never known poverty. My parents worked hard and they went to bed hungry, but they fed us. Then my father became an ambassador, so I ended up being driven by chauffeurs. And then we became refugees. After that, I looked at it through this "glass" of to have and have not, and at the end of the day, who actually helps, who actually steps up, who is there for you.
The drone war takes place 24/7, 365 days a year. The war doesn't stop on Christmas. It's like being a fireman when there's a fire every single day, day after day after day. That's emotionally and physically taxing.
You may have to declare your forgiveness a hundred times the first day and the second day, but the third day will be less and each day after, until one day you will realize that you have forgiven completely. And then one day you will pray for his wholeness and give him over to me so that my love will burn from his life every vestige of corruption.
If I'm exhausted and I just don't feel like it, then I don't do it. I am a human being, after all. But I also know I'm the kind of person who, if I take one day off, well, it's very easy for me to take the next day off and then quit exercising.
Day after day we looked for rain, and day after day we saw nothing but the sun. Lavender that we had planted in the spring died. The patch of grass in front of the house abandoned its ambitions to become a lawn and turned into the dirty yellow of poor straw. The earth shrank, revealing its knuckles and bones, rocks and roots that had been invisible before.
After I left Texas and went to California, I had a hard time getting anyone to play anything that I was writing, so I had to end up playing them myself. And that's how I ended up just being a saxophone player.
For me, if I'm completely honest, I've always loved playing Captain Hook, also because I've gotten a chance to play so many different variations of him, so I haven't just been playing the same guy day in, day out.
When I was growing up on our 53-acre dairy farm, we were obsessed with food; it was the center of our lives. We planted it, grew it, harvested it, peeled it, cooked it, served it, consumed it - endlessly, day after day, season after season.
I like to be completely exhausted when I go to bed, so if I worked out and I had a long day, that's enough for me. Then I get on the bed and oof! So nice.