This title sat in my hook book for almost five years before I felt ready to write it.
At the time I was heartbroken, mourning a dead dream. I had moved across the country for what I thought was love. In a way it was. I loved the ideas we shared and the music we were making. Then it was over before I knew it, burned out as quickly as it caught flame. I felt bitter and paralyzed; too stubborn to move home and admit my mistake, but unsure how to move forward.
When everything around me was a mess, I wrote. I raged on pages in my diary, reliving the worst moments and cross-examining them to decide what lessons I’d take away. I poured my feelings of self-loathing into shitty poems and songs. That went on for a few months, until I picked up a journal of guided prompts. It was called something extremely cringey like “Dream Big! Life Plan!” I was desperate and willing to try anything. The planner had a pretty generic daily template to jot down appointments and to-do lists. Every day, it asked me to write three things I was grateful for. Initially I thought it was silly, but I filled it out diligently. Slowly but surely, my days began to change. Waking up alone was actually kind of peaceful. A house too big for one person was actually kind of nice, to have so much extra space. A strange new city gradually started to feel like home.
Today I’m aware that gratitude as a practice has been found to have tremendous mental health benefits, from amplifying positive feelings to improving relationships, creativity, and even quality of sleep. A regular gratitude practice was exactly what I needed. I’ve always been an ambitious person, and too often the effort of wanting to progress trips me up into complaining; looking at everything under a magnifying glass for flaws. Now I make a conscious effort to focus on the good parts, to choose an attitude of optimism. The “Dream Big!” planner is long gone, but I still write in a gratitude journal faithfully (and we have a gratitude channel in the Kimmunity Discord server). I feel a real difference if I skip too many days in a row.
I’ve written many songs in the heat of the moment, but sometimes it takes some time to process an experience enough to artfully capture those fleeting feelings. Or in this case, it took a global pandemic that forced me to stop and take stock of how far I’ve come. I finally wrote Lucky To Be Lonely in 2020, with inspiration from day 121 of WeCreateNow and day 7 of Emma McGann’s 10 Song Challenge.
Working up the courage to record and release this song was another matter altogether. I knew it needed a guitar solo, and I knew it would be most poetic if I played the guitar myself. As much as I love electric guitar, I have a long way to go before I feel like I’ll have any confidence as a “guitar player”. Over three years, I went through spurts of seriously practicing several hours a day, to neglecting guitar for weeks straight, or going back to the same five or six tunes within my comfort zone. That pattern is finally changing, since I enrolled in a fretboard fluency online program called Sonora. It has a dynamic curriculum, technique exercises, group classes, and one-to-one lessons with a mentor. I’m only one month into the program, but I’m loving it a lot and feeling hopeful for the future. I’m excited to see how my guitar playing will evolve, so it seemed like a good time to record a snapshot of where I am today. Someday I’ll look back on this song as my very first guitar solo. Who knows what I’ll think about it then. For now, I feel pretty proud. Like the song says, I really believed my heart was so broken I would die. But here it is, still beating. I’m alive and feeling so, so lucky. KM
Lucky To Be Lonely
Woke up this morning in my queen sized bed
It’s felt so much bigger since the day you left
And I’m lucky
To have it all to myself
I made some coffee in my Aeropress
It don’t even matter if I make a mess
‘Cause I’m lucky
Nobody to impress
You know I thought that I would die
So was I surprised to find
My heart still beating
My lungs still breathing
I’m gonna be fine
‘Cause I’m lucky to be lonely
I can stay out past midnight or go home at eight
Watching bad action movies that you hate
And I’m lucky
To be my own perfect date
Yeah
I can picture you walking down a busy street
With somebody falling down to kiss your feet
And I’m lucky
That someone isn’t me
Oh yeah
You know I thought that I would die
So was I surprised to find
My heart still beating
My lungs still breathing
I’m gonna be fine
‘Cause I’m lucky to be lonely
I’m lucky to be lonely
Maybe someday I’ll change my mind
Take a chance and start again
But until then
I’m loving how my time is spent
Hey hey hey yeah
You know I thought that I would die
So was I surprised to find
My heart still beating
My lungs still breathing
I’m loving my life
‘Cause I’m lucky to be lonely
That’s right
I’m lucky to be lonely
Ooh
It’s just me, myself and I
Lucky I’m alive
It’s just me, myself and I
Lucky I’m alive
It’s just me myself and I
So lucky, so lucky, so lucky, so lucky
Lucky I’m alive
I’m lucky to be lonely