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.

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

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.

[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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.