Come to This

Good evening, dear listeners. 

This is a breakup mix. However, before you start wondering who it's about... it's about me.

I broke up with an idea I had about how things are supposed to be. I broke up with a subconscious need I had to "get back to normal" which for me means some version of being married, because that's all I really know. I broke up with worrying about finding someone, about becoming less attractive with every year I age, with dying alone. I broke up with the bitterness of watching someone who said I was irreplaceable replace me within weeks with someone younger and fitter. I broke up with feeling sorry for myself watching the father of my children step into a new home life and pursue his dreams while I struggle through 20 hour days trying to make my life work. I broke up with guilt and I broke up with grief.

I'm not going to pretend I'll always take the higher road, that I won't occasionally have a little too much to drink and cry that I'm not strong enough for any of this. I will, however, always try to be a little bit better than I was the day before. More mindful, more determined, more confident. 

And I will learn to love without fear. 

I will.

My Own Best Girl

Dug this out from the archives. Yes, those are my boots.

Yes, I still have those boots.

Here's one of those aforementioned bleed-into-one-another type mixes. There's no unifying theme. There's no one event in my life that's dictating my song choices. 

I'm a navel gazer by nature. I like to think it's more that I'm introspective and thoughtful. That I'm invested in my emotional and spiritual growth and in order for one to evolve, one must analyze to understand and therefore change. But let's be real. I'm just fucking dwelling. Sometimes it will take me months or years to process something that's happened because I'm just really fucking slow. It'll happen in the tiniest doses on a drive home, late at night when the kids are sleeping, on my lunch break while I'm waiting in the McDonald's drive through. 99% percent of the time, the trigger is a song. It doesn't even have to be a song from that time. Sometimes it's a song I've never heard before. All of the sudden, whatever it was I was dwelling on, the memory or the emotion gets tucked inside a few minutes of melody, suddenly safe and sensible.

This is probably why I consume new music at a ridiculous pace. Why I need mixes. It's how I organize my memories, my thoughts, my emotions.

I probably need a therapist.

Instead, I have Spotify. 

Enjoy.

Just Get There

Hey there readers, it's your faithless mixtape maker here. I've got so many "in progress" mixes waiting in the wings, I'll try to be better about cleaning them up and posting. I tend to start a new playlist and then one bleeds into the next, the tracks sometimes repeating, finding a place in between newer, more relevant-to-my-current-mood songs.

I'm going to start with this one because I've been meaning to put it up here for ages. Work is a big part of my life. Not just because I need it to live and support my kids but because my job is so much more than a job.

I started out at this company as a secretary. I'm a musician and a writer by trade, after all. Before I went back to work, I was a stay at home mom who played in a band. I was used to not being in charge of anything, not even my own life. I could handle filing and typing and taking phone calls. So I did that for a while. I have zero mechanical abilities. I didn't know anything about boilers or piping or compressors. I wasn't interested.

And then I got interested.

I had some passionate, interesting, intelligent people come into my life who didn't care that I was a secretary and a woman and who couldn't fix anything mechanical if her life depended on it. I wanted to learn and so they taught me. I started taking classes. It didn't matter if it was over my head or not. I discovered I was organized. I could think through a project and manage it. I could manage people. I liked managing people, leading them and helping them succeed. Over the years I was handed more and more. We expanded and I was sent out to help new offices come online. I loved it. I was in charge of things and I wasn't afraid. I learned mechanical systems. I learned accounting. I learned operations. I learned whatever I needed to, whatever I wanted to.

Then I stopped being afraid to take charge in my personal life. I was a woman holding a position women don't hold. What was I afraid of at home? I started asking the same questions I'd been asking for years that I'd been thus far content to let go unanswered. The answers I got were heartbreaking. I started thinking about my dreams, about the power dynamic in my relationship, about my children growing up at an alarming rate who I so desperately wanted to provide a stable home for.

When someone on my team no longer supports the common goal we've all agreed to, we have a conversation about change. We talk about steps to get the train back on the tracks together. I make sure they know how we can get this done together, then I wait to see if they'll pull alongside me. Whether they do or don't, I still keep moving. Sometimes this means leaving someone behind.

My job is more than just what I do for a living. It's my family (in some cases literally) and my world. It's where I get inspired, learn new things, stretch my abilities, test my wings. I meet people who challenge me, frustrate me, teach me, change me.

This is the playlist I throw on in the mornings on my way to work. Some of the songs are cheesy, some are probs deeper than necessary but hey. You're here for the music, right? I promise the music is good.

Kjære - A Mix for Mid-Summer Anticipation

Guys, I'm not going to lie. This past year has kind of been the pits. I've been making hateful, stupid mixes about how the world sucks and we're all going to die, blah blah blah... I suppose that's what happens to people when they get divorced and deal with all that awesome fallout and then try to date someone who is actually normal and have that blow up also because you're a mess and shouldn't be dating in the first place and then somebody you really loved once decides to go and get married and you just kind of lose your shit and retreat into a semi-permanent state of self-inflected late 90's emo/pop mixtape purgatory.

So, I apologize for my silence but I'm pretty sure nobody but me was interested in my mixes that consisted largely of every song off of Static Prevails with the occasional Sunny Day Real Estate song thrown in for extra angst.

Not long ago I said that it seems like my theme this year is that I know it's going to hurt, but I'm going to do it anyway. I think the reason things are working out that way is because for right now, bad decisions feel better than apathy. Maybe I'm doing the wrong thing but at least I'm doing something, I tell myself. I know I'm lost but I'd rather storm off into the wilderness and see what's out there rather than fucking wait on the path to be rescued. I'll probably get poison ivy and maybe get chased by bears but I'll have a fucking awesome story to tell.

So here's my story right now, as much as I understand it. I am enjoying a sweet moment while simultaneously fully anticipating that it will all go to hell.

I know it's going to hurt, but I'm going to do it anyway. Bears be damned.

1

Keep Your Hands in Your Pockets

Good morning lovlies. I'm happy to report this particular mix comes from a request for fall playlist and lord knows I'm a people-pleaser.

However, be ye warned, this ain't no crowd-pleaser. This is a lo-fi, meandering, pretentious mix of tracks that are meant to be heard walking through the woods on an overcast day. For this reason, I've kept this one short, to mitigate the effects of these obnoxiously emotional and somewhat depressive tunes.

It should go without saying I've been listening to this one on repeat.

Really though, autumn has been a notoriously difficult season for me. If something is going to come around and twist me up good and proper, it most likely will happen as the leaves start to turn. Therefore, I naturally tend toward some slower songs, a lot of acoustic guitar and bullshit.

So come take a walk with me in the forest. Keep your hands in your pockets and we'll both stay warm.

Niebieski: A Late Summer Mix

My dear listeners! How has your summer been? Are you as overwhelmed by the speed and variance of this season as I am? Are the changes swirling up like an evening storm and leaving you drenched but feeling oh-so-goddamn alive?

No?

Oh well. In that case, lucky you. Enjoy your sweet and placid existence.

No such luck here. I'm busy becoming my future self, living and loving and occasionally having the shit kicked out of me, metaphorically and otherwise.

Niebieski is my word of the summer. It's a Polish word. I have a dear friend, just barely older and wiser than I am and that is what he calls me. I try to say it sometimes when I'm feeling brave and he just laughs the way someone who speaks many languages does when someone like me (woefully inadequate in the language department) makes a fool of herself stumbling over the sounds.

I mean seriously, why is Polish so difficult? It hurts to speak it.

Anyway. Here's a mix for you. A niebieski playlist for a summer that's winding down.

More soon.

Girls of Summer

Good morning my dear readers. I've had an inspiring weekend. Made my living room pretty with some paint and rearranging.

Also made this mix. I keep a "junk drawer" of songs I come across that I'm really liking at the moment and I realized today that a good portion of them were female artists. This is a pretty big change from my youth when I was listening to largely emo and post-hardcore stuff which as we 90's kids know, was largely male dominated. It wasn't a conscious choice to listen to mostly male fronted bands (although I suspect hormones may have had something to do with it) just as now it isn't a conscious decision to choose female artists for my listening pleasure. Things just happen. Like this mix. It just happened this morning. Enjoy.

P.S. You may have noticed Sylvan Esso has made another appearance here and it's because I'm obsessed with them. Go check them out. The whole album is killer.