I wouldn’t describe myself as an unhappy person. I think describing myself that way does nothing but doom me to a sense of misery. But I would describe myself as a restless person. I remember a day when I was particularly uptight for some reason or another, and I was sitting on a bench with a friend.

​

       “What are you doing to rest your soul?” she asked me.

 

       “Rest my soul? What the hell does that mean?” I answered without a moment’s thought.

​

       I thought it sounded like it came out of a really low-end self-help book. Not that she meant poorly—we laughed it off. Nonetheless, the question stuck with me in a peculiar way; not because it was so perfectly phrased that it darted to my heart, but because the sentiment was not one I had spent much time considering. I think that is where this song came from: a perpetual state of worrying about or chasing something I perceive to be missing. Perhaps my resistance to the idea that I should "rest more" is what created the character in this song.

​

       "Just in Case" is mostly fictional. It follows a whirlwind romance with a girl who seems to, generally speaking, be up to no good (scamming people, telling fortunes, etc.). But as she begins to seem more perfect, becoming more fantastical and saying things that are farther and farther out, I long to see her again. Maybe I envy her whimsical, live-and-let-live nature, moving from one place to the next. Or, it could be that I am criticizing myself for following a random urge—however short-sighted—simply because I can’t sit still.

I have always had a suspicion and a fear of doing "nothing." If I am not working on something, I feel time is wasting away. So, I think that in this song, I am following this flash-in-the-pan moment "just in case." Perhaps it is a reflection of the idea that when I find myself lacking something to work towards, I might make decisions I would otherwise not make, justified by the idea that it’s "something to do."

​

I should know by now that my friend is always right.

​

Love,

NM