Box of Feelings was written on a train to an over night bus to Zagreb, Croatia. I was nearing the end of my Europe trip and thinking about what to do next. This was my second Europe trip and other than the fact that I’ve seen more countries than I had last year, I’m in the exact same place that I was.

I have a plan, but it’s too long-term. It’s not something I can achieve any time soon and in order to survive until then I need a short-term plan. I didn’t have the long-term plan when I came back from my trip last year, so I suppose something is different from last year.

My long-term plan is to write songs and sell them, either with someone else’s name on it and with my own. That had been my dream that I kept a secret, even from myself, for years, and even though it’s still the plan I feel like I’m putting it on the back burner. I feel like I’m starting to hide from it again. Like I’m afraid to fail again and it’s keeping that dream on a leash.

That’s what these lyrics are about. With no real plan in sight I wasn’t looking forward to coming home to the dreams I was running from.

But now I have a short-term plan and thinking more about my long-term plan. I just hope it works out.

Love
Roxanne

Eighteen as you might have guessed, if you read it, was written about my life at the age of 18. I had just finished school and was supposed to be deciding what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. Of course, since the only thing I’d ever really wanted to do was write songs and perform them but I thought that particular profession was way out of my reach, so I had nothing.

Apparently, me without plans is not a good combination. I sat on the couch all day while my friends had work or university, just waiting until they were done for the day. Or, more importantly, waiting for Friday night so we could go out, despite my lack of funds, and get completely wasted.

I’m serious. One time, we went out and I only had $5 on me. I got the most drunk I had ever been and had MacDonald’s as an after drinking snack. I still came home with my $5.

That may sound like I’m bragging, but I’m not. I woke up the next morning so sick, I was throwing up all day. I also managed to make out with my friends older brother and break one of my favourite shoes.

The worst thing about that night, though, was that I ditched one of my other friends to go out drinking. She didn’t speak to me for like a week afterwards. My need to go out and prove that I had something going on in my life nearly cost me a friend, and maybe my liver.

But I didn’t stop there. I continued going off and getting drunk almost every week. And subsequently spending almost every Saturday lying very still and trying not to throw up. One time I think I even had alcohol poisoning. My sister found me outside, on my back and thought I was dead.

This continued even after I golf a job, because I knew it wasn’t what I wanted to do. The only thing I wanted to do, I thought it was a fantasy and I could not think of a single other thing that I wanted, so those Friday nights were all I had to look forward to every week.

How sad is that? I refused to try for what I wanted and wasted years of my life being bored and wasted.

Love
Roxanne