The more you get into conversations with people, you find out they've been brainwashed by the news and they don't actually know any better.

I'm 33, my generation, when I was young, we'd go out into the woods for the entire day and come back for dinner. I was definitely a kid of the '80s, who was out and about.

For a long time I wanted to be special and to stick out amongst the crowd. Something I yearn for now is to be one of many.

Because I can isolate and be a bit of a loner, [my ideal] is finding some sense of community where I'm one of many and where my skills are equally as important and valuable.

[My ideal] is being able to be outdoors, have a labor intensive life, and then have this other life, where I hop on a plane and go sing to people in Norway.

I'm strong and I can do things that scare me. I can drive in the snow even though it terrifies me. I'm doing it all alone, I don't have a boyfriend, it was like, I can do this.

Sometimes people think, You don't get to have it all, you don't get to be happy, life's a struggle, but what if it's not?

Whether I'm a hero or a zero doesn't really matter. It's all perception.

In my 20s, my mom and I went and saw the bridges of Madison County, which are in Iowa, and I had seen that movie with Clint Eastwood and Meryl Streep. I've always done these Iowa road trips. I did this transcendental meditation course in Fairfield, Iowa. So I've known since my early 20s that someday I would buy a farm in Iowa.

I was toying with the idea of ambivalence a lot. It's something I work on, not being so invested in outcomes and being more engaged in the process of my life.

I'll always want to play and share my music with as many people as I can, but the emphasis is more on how do I find a happy place, what's my balance, what's my ideal.

I want to push myself to be brave and out of my comfort zone, but I guess I stay in my comfort zone knowing I have my family close by.

I left the Midwest feeling like, People are small-minded, they don't want to ask questions, they don't want to think out of the box. Some of that was true.