So, I'm going on tour.

Day one. Fly date. Clothing? Check. Cell phone charger? Check. Thirty-four page spreadsheet detailing every cue for every song? Check.

Passport? ::looks around:: Uh...passport? Oh, kronk. This would be the time for some...colorful metaphors.

Tear the apartment apart. It has to be here. No? Shoot. The car then? Not there either. Think...where was the last place I had it? The post office in Brentwood. Call 411, get their number. Not in the lost and found.

This is a perfect time to panic.

Go back to apartment, realize there's no way I'm going to make a 15:45 call at the airport. And now for the worst call of my life. I close and open the phone for what feels like an hour before I can screw up my courage enough to call the tour manager to tell him I lost my passport...on the day we're supposed to leave.

All the excitement is drained out of me. I feel about half an inch tall.

He's surprisingly nice about it. Probably because the show we're supposed to be going to is a one-off, essentially. I still feel a special sort of awful usually reserved for realizing that button you just pushed is going to fire the missiles at Russia. No problem, he says. Get it fixed, this is just one show, have one by the time we leave on Tuesday next week.

And yet even before that minor hiccup, I was still trying to feel happy about working in the industry. It started about the time I accepted the job at Bandit, before I quit the helpdesk job. I was sitting at my desk after getting the call. I remember realizing that I had just landed a job in an industry in which I had been seeking employment for months. The Rosco swatchbook in my bag had a chance to be used once again. I'd get to have a job where moving around wasn't frowned upon. I would no longer be uttering pre-scripted answers for common computer problems. And I felt...nothing different. I felt no desire to sing or run through the halls shouting. I was still just as hungry and bored and tired of the operose task of sitting all day as I had been two minutes ago. The same sort of long-term fatigue still sat settled across my countenance.

This malaise is ridiculous.

This is it. The beginning of a career. Not just the tour...Bandit, too. I'm working for a big lighting company. Anything is within my reach. I know that if I work hard, I can make it. I've almost made it. I'm telling the truth when I tell people I'm livin' the dream. And yet, I'm having trouble feeling excited. I feel excited when I'm designing - I can get into the music, I get into the groove and feel that feeling of enthusiasm that I've been missing for so long.

But something important is still missing. There's still so many questions that have yet to be answered. What am I going to do after tour? What about a wife and kids - where do they fit into my career?1 I still don't have any close friends here in Nashville. How can I have any sort of meaningful relationships when I'm on the road several months out of the year? I still feel like I haven't done everything I'm supposed to do in ministry yet; am I in the right industry at all?

So many questions, uncertainties, etc. Gah. I remember when I was so sure what I wanted and where I was going. Yeah - gimme that back.

I'm sure I'll find my fire again. I still hate this feeling. I want to get up every day and be more than just okay...I want to feel excitement and joy and eagerness. I'm not unhappy or anything, just strangely unsatisfied.

I guess emotions are weird like that.

Exit, stage left. Sparks

1. My mother worries about this about ten times more than I do.