Julian had a chapter written from his point of view in this book titled, "Bad Days, Good Days."

Lately, I've been having a lot of bad days in quick succession.

When this happens, it's incredibly difficult to remember that the sadness cannot last forever.

But today... today was a really good day.

I'm not really active on most forms of social media, because I cannot stand the fake BS. A downside to this? When something really good happens, I don't have many outlets for shouting about it.

But I remembered that I have you guys. And I view my readers as my friends. And since we're friends, I wanted to share a Good Day with you.

If any of you have paid any attention to my old A&A video trailers, or have noticed any of the chapters' music playlists, or the quotations at the top of certain chapters, you'll have probably noticed a running theme with one common artist: EDEN (aka The Eden Project, aka Jonathon Ng).

His music has been an absolute inspiration to me FOR YEARS. His lyrics sear through my soul. It is perfection, and I feel like I am living lifetime across lifetime when he's filling my headphones with gold, late at night. 

When I am completely alone in my own head, his music has been there to keep me company. To keep me sane. To make me feel less alone. He is genuinely my favorite musician (tied with Aquilo). He's one of the very few artists whose lyrics have moved me to ugly sobbing tears.

If I had to pick one artist's lyrics to represent Arrows & Anchors as a whole, it would be EDEN. He is the very soundtrack to this story. 

His song "Wake Up," especially, has an unmovable place in my heart, in relation to Arrows & Anchors. So does "rock + roll," and "Nocturne," and "Gravity," and "Drowning," and "Circles" (the latter of which is attached to the top of this chapter), along with a whole arsenal of other songs by him.

And this is part of why I'm sharing this here, right now.

Now, while he's from Dublin, I've known Jonathon was coming to Texas for a while, to tour in support of his new album. I'm in Texas. You can probably see where this is going. But things came up (especially in the last several days) and I didn't think I would have any chance at catching him. I mentally accepted the fact that he would be coming directly to my city and I would have to miss him entirely.

But someone I love with all of my heart made sure that wouldn't happen.

And... well...

Guys, it feels like I'm flying. And I can't come down.

Jonathon even knows about A&A now. He actually knows this story exists, and knows the influence he's had on it. I still can't wrap my head around that.

(Thank you, my love. I cannot ever repay you for making all of this happen. And thank you, EDEN. This means more to me than you'll ever know. I'm floating in air.)

If anyone is unfamiliar with EDEN and would like to check him out, type this into your browser window to be taken to a YouTube playlist with a small sampling of my absolute favorites from him:

bit.ly/eden2018

★★★★