2024 Soundtrack While Enduring, Adapting, and Moving Forward

Bad Hand

It was deep into a midwest winter. The skin-biting, below-freezing air relentlessly made going outside a dismal experience. Slushy, slippery snow piled up along the streets required extra caution to navigate, especially at night when we often found ourselves active. Time was running out as the month progressed seemingly faster every day. My parents, brother, and I were in the process of moving to a house after almost 20 years of renting in a much smaller place. Extracting all the settled artifacts of two decades was a mix of amusement at finding long-lost remnants of our life there and dread because of how much stuff we had tetris-ed in that we now had to move. It was a surreal time going through the moving process. We weren’t sure we would ever find a place of our own. After the many disappointments of potential homes that would meet our needs slipping away from us, our hopes were slim. Then it actually happened. Like, it was for real. I really can’t describe how utterly unbelievable it felt for us to finally be able to move on and have our own space to settle and grow in.

Don’t Look Back by John Mark Nelson

Unfortunately, in the last few months of 2023, before this moving process began, we were already dealing with my grandma’s unexpectedly declining health. She was in her 70’s and was one of the healthiest, active, outgoing people you could meet. She went in the hospital to have a procedure done for a known health issue but one surprising delay after another, she progressively became weakened to the point that she couldn’t have the procedure done and more health problems had developed or were discovered. Continuing over the beginning months of 2024, we and some friends were taking her to her increasingly frequent doctor appointments and witnessed the degradation of her health and spirit as it was happening. It didn’t make any sense. The fact that all the fixes the hospitals tried weren’t working didn’t make sense. The later discoveries of more serious problems didn’t make sense. She ended up in multiple rehab centers and our visits continued to accelerate as we tried to stay on top of her care and still hoped for a recovery. We even started making plans to bring her to our newly-acquired home to care for her with the help of nurse aides. Come late April, she was gone. I still wonder to this day if any of this could have been avoided. She just shouldn’t have gone out that way.

Lullaby by Inner Wave

We didn’t get very far at our house with the rearrangements to bring my grandma home to live with us before she passed. Because the weekly and daily visits to my grandma were our focus for months, we couldn’t fully focus on moving in properly. Our house was a mess of boxes, supplies, and temporary set-ups so we could function with the basics – eat, sleep, work. Worse, we came to learn of some expensive issues with the house that really dampened the excitement of owning it. The death of my grandma led to an ongoing drowning flood of estate management, legal processes, and paperwork at a time that was fresh with the heavy impact of grief and exhaustion. We also had a stream of family friends and acquaintances pass away, with a funeral almost every weekend.

The tone of our year had been set, like being dealt a hand of bad cards and continuing to draw bad cards. Negativity was the air we breathed. Between our personal issues and external pressures, we were suffocating for joy in life. We had our moments of relief, but they were just temporary distractions. My family trudged forward, doing whatever was necessary, but it has been a soul-draining, sanity-sucking experience. We never had a year like this before.

Break by Good Kid

Now, I’ll tell you about some notable (and more positive) aspects of my year: I tried out artificial intelligence, I turned 30, and I went to Japan for the first time.

City Love by Public Library Commute

Artificial Intelligence

Take Your Problems to the Disco by Stolen Gin

I knew about AI from hearing about it in recent years, but early this year, I finally turned my attention to it – and I was completely blown away. One night I tried out AI image generation. Five nonstop hours later, I had a ridiculous amount of saved AI images generated by my personally-written prompts that I was just marveling at. Seeing my invisible imagination in the digital flesh made me feel such a bright excitement inside that I rarely ever feel. I was actually looking at what I see in my mind, and it was just unbelievable. The possibilities of use were rushing in.

Go Getter by Fulton Lee

Then, I came across the idea of selling AI prompts – the words you type into the box from which the AI bases its generated output. I tried out one site and cranked out (after many hours and over multiple days) six consistent prompts. I was pretty proud of them, but I soon realized that I was late to the AI prompt-writing game. The sellers on the site that were most successful were there first when AI was just stepping out onto the scene, and they already had an extensive selection of impressive prompts for sale. Pretty much any idea that could be thought of was already out there, so I moved on.

Where We Left Off by Kanto 3551

In late September, I learned about AI music generation. By this time, I already knew about image generation, video generation, integrations into apps and websites, and all kinds of other practical uses for AI. The one use I had surprisingly never heard of, was music generation. You mean I can “create” my own music? I looked into it and just like my reaction to when I first tried image generation, I was completely blown away by the results. Again, my brain was on overdrive about the many applications for this kind of tool.

stay home by G. Nine

AI is fantastic, but I have also become aware of the controversy surrounding it. Opinions on AI in general are polarized, but the use of AI in the creative world is especially hot. I read about the copyright infringement legal issues that AI companies have gotten themselves into. For now, I’m waiting to find out what the next legal steps regarding use will be.

No Clue by NCT 127

Turning 30

This was my last year in my 20’s, so I had a lot of reflection and planning to do for entering my 30’s. I had all year to think about it, to process it, and I already decided ahead of time that I was not going to live my life after 30 like I did the first part of my life. I decided that I’m going to push forward to step out of my comfort zone, put myself out there more, learn to speak up for myself, and not let anything or anyone keep me from achieving my goals. I have to become the person I’m supposed to be and do it while it still has any meaning. Even as I made all these decisions, my ever-present anxiety snickered in the back of my mind and looked over at depression that was too busy ruminating to notice. Fear, doubt, and cowardice played cards in the corner, unaffected by what the brain control system was announcing to the rest of the body. Needless to say, though I’m still going to say it, making decisions and actually doing them is hard. I have in fact been making a conscientious effort every day to break free from my undesirable self, but man, fighting an internal war while trying to be more present externally is just plain hard. I’ll never give up, though.

Ribbons by Summer Salt

Japan

My parents did this amazing thing for me in such a terrible year: they made it possible for me to go on my first trip to Japan in September. It was my first time abroad, first time to Japan, first plane ride (13hrs!?) as an adult, and absolutely terrifying. Here’s little me who doesn’t do anything or go anywhere and then BOOM, I’m going to Japan! *stops hyperventilating* So that happened. I went with a small group of family members and got to stay in the same hotel room as my other grandma, who is Japanese and now my only surviving grandparent. We were there for one week, which was too short but packed full of activity. The experience was absolutely SURREAL. It was awesome to finally put my high school Japanese language skills to use. It was fantastic meeting my wonderful Japanese family members in person, and, to top off the experience, I got to spend a day with my Japanese language class sensei, who taught me the bulk of the deeper knowledge I have of the Japanese language. I took thousands of pictures and videos and tried to take in every moment as much as I possibly could. By the end of the trip, I was ready to spend another week there. However, it was time to go, so with laughter and tears with the Japan family seeing us off at the airport, we safely returned home. The overall experience bolstered me with the reassurance that I really could go out and have amazing far-from-home experiences.

You Give Me That Feeling by Fireflight

Music

Music is integral to my being. I’m an introvert and deeply value my alone time to reground myself. I deal with depressive anxiety, and part of my management plan is listening to music. Sometimes, when I’m feeling low, I want to sit in the low tones, slower paces, listen to the lyrics that express how I feel, and cry if I need to. Other times, I need to shake the fog I’m in and play something starkly different to wake me up and remind me that there’s more to life than what I’m stuck in.

Last year was an amazing music discovery year for me. I’ll have to tell you about it sometime. Many of the artists and genres I discovered carried over to this year, and I delved deep into them as I didn’t have as much time to explore new music as I did in the past. The genres I listened to this year were all over the place, from thoughtful piano ballads to indie alternative to funky dance to heavy rock to K-R&B/hip hop to sweet love songs. Most of these genres I don't normally listen to, but this year they had their moment to shine.

The year started mainly with a mix of contemplative, moody, and chill songs by Public Library Commute, John K, John Mark Nelson, and Inner Wave. Kanto 3551 delightfully came into my life in May with the song Where We Left Off, and even though they only have three songs on Spotify, they became my top artist of the year. Fulton Lee, Stolen Gin, and Summer Salt kept things light, upbeat, and easy-going. Good Kid and Fireflight were energizing and told it like it is. NCT 127 kept things stylishly cool with tracks you can’t not move to, and G. Nine kept things warm and smooth.

Lost by John K

Looking Toward 2025

This year was bad, and things will continue to be rough into 2025. Thankfully, life isn’t bad all the time. We still have so many resources to help us endure the difficult, dark times and celebrate the high, happy times. I’m going to do whatever I can to make 2025 the best it can be, and there will definitely be music.