I felt crazy, as though I didn't know how far away this was when I bought the tickets, why did I do such a thing? However, by the 5th hour of the flight the voice in my head had finally convinced me, "Jackie, you're doing this for music and you're doing this to fill that gap." I took a deep breath and calmly played Bejeweled until I fell asleep.

"That gap", in case some are wondering, is what inspired the song 'Next Life.' I have always been one to crush hard. When I get a gut feeling in my stomach about a guy, that feeling stubbornly sticks around until all possibilities of making it work have turned to impossibilities. This is how I have always been, and I suppose it means when I finally find the right man, I will love him deeply. I suppose this is a good thing but not when my heart is trapped in a crush for months, making it hard for me to get through my day. That's how the crush I had on an unavailable man eventually drove me to write a song about it. I had gone out to get away from my own thoughts and I ran into this crush of mine at a bar with his longtime girlfriend. (Great, I drove here to get away and ran into the very thing I was trying to get away from.) What was crazy about this random meeting is that it was as if his lady knew how I felt about him, even though I was acting completely civil and appropriate. She could see right through me and proceeded to taunt me the way Regina George taunted Cady in Mean Girls. She flaunted him and was all over him, to the point where he was actually acting a tad uncomfortable. I went home and I wrote Next Life that same night.

A month later I flew to Germany for a tour I had set up for myself. If I can't be with the man I want to be with, I'm just going to run away. I'm going to fill my life with music until I find another man to love. As for all of my past crushes, see you in the next life!