At Night, Alone.

Do you ever listen to a song and it just resonates with you on an intense level?

What about an entire album?

I've been on my own for about a week and it's been a bit of a struggle. I've lived alone before, but never 3,000+ miles away from almost everyone in my life.

Being in a new place is challenging and doing it while trying to keep your mental health in check is even harder. I've been trying to get acclimated, but it is a slow and steady process. I've been spending my days occupied with work, my evenings cooking and binge watching tv, but my nights are spent wide awake, overthinking as usual.

I was trying to figure out ways to fall asleep without alcohol or melatonin, two things that always worked for me in the past, but I no longer have the option to use them any more, and stumbled across a beautiful album by Mike Posner: At Night, Alone. I'd listened to a few songs from it before (I Took a Pill in Ibiza and In the Arms of a Stranger), but had never heard the true versions without being remixed for the radio.

Let me tell you... the entire album is incredible. It's hauntingly beautiful. I'm not sure it would have the same impact on me if I didn't listen to it at night, alone, but that's how I listen to it for now.

The songs put me in the feels, and they might do the same for you, but I highly recommend giving the album a listen.

If you do, let me know what you think.

Honesty (is the Best Policy)

At a young age, I learned how to lie... and I learned how to do it really well.

From little white lies about my homework, to manipulating people I cared about, to the big lies that hid my addiction from everyone around me.

Since getting sober, I've been working on trying to be a better person. Lying had become second nature to me so it's been a major adjustment trying to be honest when possible.

Before I left good ol' Roslyn, PA, I opened up to someone I cared about.

I spent a lot of time thinking about it as I drove across the country, the Philadelphia skyline fading into the background of my mind. I kept thinking how much it sucked to open myself up like that just to be let down and if it would've been better just to have kept it to myself.

But I couldn't keep thinking that.

At the end of the day, it was so much better to put it all on the line because I would've drove myself nuts thinking about all of the what ifs.

I guess if there is anything to take away, it's this: try to be as honest as possible, even when it hurts a little to do it. You'll thank me later.