okay i ended up going very easy on this song, because the person most likely to hear it at the time was at best a pop listener and at worst a raging neurotypical.

so pretty much, from the very beginning i went in trying to make Slop. i guess i couldn't help myself though, because there ended up being modal interchange (G -> Gm) in the main prog. Near the end of the song there is a full switch into the parallel minor, the aforemetioned G minor chord has the neat effect of "teasing" that shift

probably what happened was a tale old as time, not having any pressure causes the mind to flow free, usually results in a more expressive song but rougher around the edges

when i (wrote? created? DAW-ed?) the first 8 bars, i wanted to let the song resolve for a bar. this resulted in a 9-bar phrase. But most songs are more than 9 bars, and so, to retain the structure that was already established, the song ended up with this lopsided 9-bar structure. I guess that's just what happens sometimes, the unsuspecting listener might never notice, if you're "in the know" enough to recognize it you might even like the unusual structure. it just seemed weird at the time to be dealing with 9 bars