truth is messier than a good story

I got a reply yesterday from a woman named Dana.

She said, “That scene where you told your boss you were leaving to make music about death. That’s the most badass thing I’ve ever read.”

And I sat with that for a minute. Because the truth is, it didn’t happen like that.

There was no dramatic boss conversation. I didn’t have a boss. I was working in a family-run funeral home where the lines between employee and family were blurred enough that “quitting” looked more like slowly letting go of a rope while nobody was watching.

The real version is less cinematic. I started writing songs. The songs got louder. The funeral work got quieter. And one day the balance just tipped. There was no Tuesday. There was no speech. There was just a guy in his car realizing the thing he’d been doing on the side had become the thing.

Yesterday’s email combined two stories into one. Mine and a director I knew years ago who actually did walk into his boss’s office and say he was done. His version was better for the page. I used it. That’s on me.

But here’s what I keep thinking about.

The real version, the slow fade, the quiet leaving, that’s how most people actually change their lives. Not with a mic drop. With a thousand small choices that don’t feel like choices until you look back and realize you’re standing somewhere completely different.

Nobody writes songs about the slow version. Nobody makes movies about the guy who just gradually stopped showing up to one life and started showing up to another. But that’s the version most of us are living.

My four boys didn’t notice the exact day dad stopped being a full-time funeral director. There wasn’t a day. There was a season. A long, messy, uncertain season where I was both things at once and neither thing all the way.

I’m still a licensed funeral director. I’ll always carry that. But the music is what I wake up for now. And the path from one room to the other wasn’t a hallway. It was a fog.

If you’re in the fog right now, between who you were and who you’re becoming, that’s not failure. That’s the actual shape of change. The clean version is for newsletters. The real version is for living.

Speaking of real, “Just Me Just You” comes out June 5th. It’s the most honest song I’ve ever written. No characters. No composites. Just me. Pre-save it if you want to hear what the fog sounds like when you finally walk out the other side.

And if you want the room where we talk about all of this, the real versions, the fog, the in-between, that’s The Mortals. Every Tuesday night, 8 PM Eastern. No scripts. No clean endings.

First month is $9.

P.S. Dana, if you’re reading this, the real version is more badass. Quitting is easy. Slowly becoming someone else while everyone’s watching? That takes years.