That included music. I've danced with depression since I was a teenager and, in hindsight, I've definitely had some self-destructive moments. But music and art were typically enough to distract me. Even in my low periods, songs and stories were a safe haven for all the things I couldn't say otherwise.

And then life took some very surprising turns. Very suddenly, my old ways of maintaining myself were falling short. When I started having panic attacks in public -- sitting on the floor of a grocery store, or on a sidewalk, because my vision was little more than a pinhole and my breathing was out of control -- I decided it was finally time to really learn what was going on with me. It took a couple tries, but I eventually found a therapist I could work with. It changed my life.

During this period, I was trying to work on some other projects, but I couldn't finish any lyrics. Everything song got to the words and ground to a halt. I was far too fixated on what I was learning in therapy and I had no idea what I wanted to say. So one afternoon, while struggling with yet another blank notebook page, I wrote my thoughts about something I had discussed in that week's session. The words came easily. So I had my subject.

This was pretty uncomfortable at first, though. I'd written about personal subjects from the get-go, but I'd always wrapped them in fiction. Something about sharing only part of the truth was easier, and I had more sympathy in my outlook. Autobiographically, I can be a very harsh narrator. I'm much kinder to someone I invent than I am to my actual self. It's something I'm still working on. But this was a good exercise for that very thing, and while I still prefer storytelling and likely always will, I'm glad to know I can write parts of my life with a gentler hand now.

Whenever I used to sketch out ideas into my hand recorders, I'd store them in folders for the project I thought would be the most appropriate. Since this was mostly synthesizers and palm-muted electric guitars, I figured it would go toward my more electronic project. But I'm not always the most organized. I forgot this track existed for about 10 years and I only rediscovered it while backing up an old hard drive (that's usually how I find these).

For the lyrics, I was in a period of redefining a lot of things for myself. The initial part of that process was realizing just how little I know anymore.

I like happy music with sad lyrics, or a sense of humor within something horrific. I think life is rarely singular and feelings are often tangled. Heavy events in life, although difficult, often leave you with an intense clarity about what matters to you. Achievements can be elating, but also a little sad, because you are at the end of some process that was important to you.

With this track, I wanted to make something poppy out of a hard time. I was turning over a lot of ugly parts my upbringing and seeing them in an entirely new light. It was informative and really helped me understand a lot of things I never quite got before, but it was also terribly sad. I summed up the feeling in one of my notebooks with "I'm not well, but I'm alright." The rest of the song grew around that line.

Musically, this was another song full of synths and palm mutes. But this wasn't from an earlier demo. I wrote and recorded it all as I went.

I've always found it interesting that the people who are so important in your life will likely never be known. How someone can loom so large in your mind's eye, but are a person you wouldn't think twice about if you passed them in a grocery store.

I wanted to write this song as a thank you note, to all the people who change the course of someone's existence, only to fade into the fog of time, often never knowing the impacts they've made. It's a shame that the dead can't read obituaries. A lot of us would probably learn a great amount, seeing what people say about is after we can no longer hear them.

I made it a couple years before, with no idea what music would go with it. I pulled it out again while working on this project, and worked on the song piecemeal, constructing it over the course of a couple months. It finally came together once I wrote a bassline I liked.

Lyrically, I'd describe this as a song about progress, and how it's rarely linear. There were times that I felt like I wasn't making progress at all, and I wrote this in one of those periods.

I've always had sleep trouble. I've learned not to fight it. I try to use insomnia when it comes knocking instead of wrestling with it. It's not fun to play a game that you never win.

I wrote the guitar and vocal at 2am one night, and I laid them down immediately. They were played incredibly quiet, mic just a few inches from the sources. I added the piano and the synth the next day, and that was that.

I think the lyrics are pretty straightforward on this one.