This one time I sort of went to London

I forgot I had a blog already in existence. So this saved me a little time. Maybe like 45 seconds of it, seeing as I just had to change the name and URL to something a little more current for me.

Anyhow, I am writing this to hopefully cut down on the annoying amount of repeated conversations I will likely have over the next while. I am currently sitting in Spyhouse, in Minneapolis. Anyone who takes the time to read this will probably know I left for the UK on Saturday with the intentions of playing music for a couple weeks, then leaving from there to Sweden for another couple weeks to hang out with some family.

Clearly something went wrong.

It's a relatively long and boring tale of frustration, sitting, copious amounts of free coffee, interviews, and packing and unpacking my bags too many time for my pleasure. I'll keep it simple, and leave details out that don't need mentioning here(nothing terrible happened, don't you worry).

Basically I was denied access to the UK on the grounds that I needed a Certificate of Sponsorship from someone to legally play any music within the country, even though we were not getting paid for any of the gigs we had set up. So they sent us home. Us being my friend Connor and I. We came in on separate flights, he was being held in a different area in a different terminal. We could talk to each other via pay phone while all this nonsense was happening. Connor and I have only hung out one other time in person about a year and a half ago. This was the closest we had been to each other since that time, in another country, and we never even saw each other. I find that amusing.

As someone who considers(to often self destructive extremes) the reason and purposes of God's movements and will, this forces too many questions for me. My reflex right now is to hide myself away for a bit and pretend I'm still overseas doing neat things. I feel too validated by my musical career, even if it is sort of lackluster. To have everything that I and so many other wonderful people work for suddenly fall apart produces feelings of shame and failure, even if they aren't reasonably grounded.

It's not the end of the world, things could be so much worse in a million different ways. Looking for God's purpose in it all, and for new opportunities. I suddenly have a lot of time on my hands, so that's nice.

Gabriel

P.S. To my friends from work, should you read this, maybe don't tell Rachel that I'm around, I really don't want to go back to work yet.