This time, last year, I was just beginning to settle into our new apartment and into my new routine. Boxes were still flowing from my office out into the hallway and, in between doing the occasional assignment for work, I was busy battling packing paper and trying to find the appropriate home for all manner of knick-nacks that I insist on carrying with me from place to place, and wondering - in the very back of my mind - where I might be moving next, two or four or more years from now.
This time in 2000, which is where I'm pulling this week's music list from, I was busy considering other movements and changes: my Senior year in high school, whether or not I'd be moving to go to college or would follow my original plan to start at a local community school (and where I'd go from there).
I can see that things change. But they really don't change that much.
And the music in my list this week seems to reflect the theme of change.
What songs make it easier for you to deal with changes in your life?
I managed to splash hot oil on my hand last night while preparing Eggplant Parmesan. The first time I've cooked it; it turned out pretty well, aside from the hand...which...ow.
So I'm saving my hand for the typing I need to do on the lesson I'm writing for work.
Here's my playlist for this week. Once more into the nostalgia void, revisiting the summer of 1999.
I have to wonder if I've conjured up some weather ju-ju with these posts. For the last week, the temperature's hovered in the 90s with a heat index in the 100s and the air in our area has come with big red warning signs and advice to minimize our trips.
I feel like I'm back in Phoenix. Stifling, stuffy, windless days and bad air.
At any rate, we're surviving by pretending to be hermits. Which, admittedly, gives me time to work on some short stories that have been collecting dust. (One of the reasons I haven't been as attentive to the blog. There are other reasons.... They're not nearly as noteworthy.)
But I'm still bopping along to my nostalgia playlist.
And here are my selections for this week. I'm taking a jump back to 1998.
A while back I talked up a writing exercise in a Music Monday post: Write to the Music. For this Wednesday's Romp Prompt, I'm pulling some inspiration from that exercise.
Listen to the above song. Watch the video. Let your mind wander. Garner some inspiration from the music, the video. And then write 50, 250, or 500 words.
Come back by midnight on Sunday, the 8th, to link your response in the comments.
My Music Mondays this summer are taking on a distinctly Phoenician-vibe. Probably because Phoenix exemplifies summer in my mind. Despite all the places I've lived over the years, all the summers I've spent between Germany and Tennessee, none of them stand out for me quite like summer days and nights in the Sonoran Desert.
Okay. I also turned 29 this year and I think it's putting me in a very nostalgic mood.
And that nostalgia has been leading me back in time when it comes to music. One of those time periods is the summer before I began high school, when adulthood and the freedoms it would bring (because who thinks of the responsibilities at 14?) felt not-so-very far away and the amazement of new beginnings outweighed the sadness that invariably accompanies endings.
These are some of the songs I remember listening to in the summer of 1997. (In fact, "Reach" made an appearance at my 8th grade graduation.)
Take me back in time. What are some of your "ending and beginning" songs?
