Moments

When I was a junior in high school, we had an assignment in English class that required us to find a song that best represented any of the ideas of Transcendentalism. After going through all my CDs, I finally decided on "Parklife" by Blur, which to me best represented connecting to nature.* Jackie, one of my classmates, picked a song called "I Woke Up In A Car" by Something Corporate. I was so caught up in it, I had to ask her what the artist was and wrote it down in a margin in my notebook.

The song is really good. Some people might write it off as being too "emo" or [insert complaint here]. But honestly? It's a solid, well-written, well-produced track off of a strong album. I get annoyed with really particular classifications when it comes to music; music is far too diverse to allow for any accurate placement. Some songs pull from too many directions, and I really, really hate it when people use a song's "classification" as a reason against it, as if it's not worthy of our time because it falls into a certain category. But I digress.

I didn't get a copy of the song until shortly after my high school graduation, and since then I've listened to it over and over, repeating it on mixes and getting lost within its lyrics and musicianship and pure awesomeness.

I've been up and down over the last week. I've been trying to find ways of cheering myself up; I read Lola and the Boy Next Door over the weekend, and while I was cheered up reading it (because it's so, so good), I still cried at the end because it affected me so. I finished This Full House and loved it, but also cried at the end for different but related reasons. Work, as usual, provides me five hours daily to mull everything over. And over. And over. It's rough being inside one's head for too long. I was driving myself crazy. I hate finding myself in a funk; I have such a hard time pulling myself out of it.

"I Woke Up In A Car" came up on my iPod earlier tonight at work, and it must have hit me at just the right moment. The song talks about the joys of embracing the unknown, of finding peace with oneself in the moment. I don't know if I could survive without some kind of structure, but I like the idea of allowing myself liberation in the moment. I was reminded that the funk will lift.** The next couple years will be interesting, and will likely allow me these moments. And I'm so ready for them.

So, all in all, I'm not feeling 100% better. (I need Earl Grey.) But I am feeling marginally better.


*I remember obnoxiously singing along with it in class; if anyone reading this now happened to be in that hour, my apologies. I don't think I understood the difference between socially okay and socially obnoxious.

**I hate how sappy this sounds. *sigh*