Nostalgia is a bitch

This story begins yesterday. After an incredibly long time with one mobile carrier, I finally decided to make the switch to one of the big ones. You know the one...it's the one who claims to have the most reliable network, 27 years in a row. Yeah, that one. I got to switch over my number and my watch, and it was painless and so incredibly easy.

It worked out in my favor because I am now actually saving a lot of money on my monthly bill, so I'm not complaining, and now my wife can't hold it against me that I am on 'that carrier.' (You get the gist...I just don't want to mention carrier names here). Part of that deal was that Apple Music would be included for the duration of the plan. So, I did the most logical thing anyone getting a free streaming service would do - I canceled the service I had been paying for and started migrating my playlist to Apple music. I was in for quite the mix of feelings, y'all. It was such an interesting process for sure.

In that process, I took a long hard look at all the music that was on that playlist...2000 songs worth of music, starting back in the early 2000s. One can't help but get nostalgic. I began at the beginning of the list and strategically eliminated the songs I definitely won't listen to anymore. As I am going through this, my ADHD brain naturally cannot help but remember the associations that I had made with songs and certain people - my ex-wife, ex-girlfriends, etc. It was a mix of emotions for sure, but it's nice to go through and, in some way, process the emotions that are associated with the songs and eventually let everything pass - excluding the songs that I don't need to listen to and adding those that bring me good feelings and positive vibes. Sifting through that collection of pop, rock, hair metal, country, and the gospel of over 20 years puts things in perspective. When I was at the beginning of that playlist so many years ago, I was at the beginning of everything, likely not even knowing where I would end up in 20 years, living a life full of uncertainty, and the next 20-something years did not begin to pull things together until I ended up in behavioral health. It was there that I found my niche, and in a lot of ways my purpose. And, looking at my playlist, one can tell that it was around that time, in the mid-2010s, that I found more purpose in my music, and my music taste became a bit more refined. I don't believe that my taste in music is stuck in one specific direction at all, but it became much more aligned with the general mood of the times. In the mid-2010s, I had just gotten divorced and began dating what I thought was the girl of my dreams, things were looking up, so naturally, my music taste became much more upbeat. Then, in the late 2010s, it became darker, briefly, but then dating and marrying the love of my life, things became more positive again. I just...I love music.

It reminds me of something that I had said so many times before - one cannot overstate the importance of music in someone's life. Music can make one feel on top of the world, down in the dumps, and anything in between. Not only that, but it can also provide a sense of purpose and direction if you listen closely enough.